Bankathon CEE: BAWAG P.S.K., Erste Bank, Raiffeisenbank International & UniCredit work toward a common cause

Viennese FinTech company ChillBill wins it! For the first time, women decided the Bankathon

"The positive response is overwhelming. We’ve been able to win four of Austria's most prestigious banks as sponsors, FinTech-inspired teams from all over Europe are here, and representatives from Commerzbank from Germany, Intesa San Paolo from Italy and CIB from Hungary came to the final presentations. With this Bankathon, we’ve achieved a new level in terms of diversity and number of guests", said André M. Bajorat, figo CEO.

Bankathon sponsors made it happen!

A total of 16 sponsors and supporters made the Bankathon possible with their support.

"Just the composition of these 16 parties reflects Bankathon's aim: bringing together banks, FinTechs and institutions in the industry. For example, BAWAG P.S.K., Erste Group, Raiffeisen Bank International and UniCredit all supported the event as Diamond sponsors", explains co-organiser Jakob Etzel from IntraBase.

T-Mobile Austria was the location sponsor of the event. Vienna-based consulting company TCI Consult was the Gold sponsor. Other supporters included the Austrian Banking Association, CEE FinTech, FAIT, FinTech Austria, Gini, KI finance, Pioneers Discover, Seon, STUZZA and TeleTrader!

"The intention of the Bankathon was to connect a whole industry with its various players and demonstrate what the best can do in just 30 hours. We have achieved exactly that: teams from banks sat side by side with FinTech companies and individual programmers from all over Europe," says Bajorat, explaining the concept. "Everyone could see the potential of these different worlds working together. We’ve managed to pull of a type of event here in Vienna that has never before taken place in Austria,” adds Lars Markull, API Evangelist at figo and co-organiser of the Bankathon.

<code> PSD2 and beyond </code>

There were 75 developers from Germany, England, Estonia, Finland, Italy, Macedonia, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovenia, Czech Republic and Hungary in attendance.

They were given the specific challenge of reinventing the banking of the future, under the theme <code> PSD2 and beyond </code>. Their only requirement was that they had to use an existing bank account for their ideas and solutions.

The jury

After 30 hours of work - about one third of all participants actually stayed overnight at the T-Center - the 24 teams presented their prototypes to the 250 guests and the renowned jury. This consisted of Paolo Barbesino, Head of CEE Digital at UniCredit, Hannes Cizek, Head of Group Digital Banking at Raiffeisenbank International, Dr. Markus Gremmel, Chief Marketing Officer at BAWAG P.S.K., Maurizio Poletto, Managing Director & Head of Design at BeeOne/Erste Bank and Dr. Friedrich Tafill, Head of Travel, Transport & Logistics at T-Systems. They were assisted by FinTech expert and figo CEO André M. Bajorat.

Three deserving winners: ChillBill, Raiffeisen Bank International & FAIT

Overall one can easily see that the solutions and ideas that have arisen at this year's Bankathon could reach to numerous topics. For example, there were results focusing on the areas of payment, investment & savings, PFM, B2B solutions, voice banking and chatbot.

1st place: ChillBill wins first prize with a chatbot solution

The winning team came from Vienna and was playing a home game. Pamina Georgiou, Clemens Helm, Pilar Huidobro and Eva Lettner implemented an idea which can certainly be used in one startup or another. Basically it’s to do with document management and functions via drag-and-drop. If, for example, an employee pays for a business lunch for her counterpart, she then scans the bill, simply pulls it into the Slack communication tool and the chatbot regulates the rest. The expense report is done without bureaucracy. For technical implementation the team used the APIs of figo and Gini. The jury selected the team for first place, earning the top prize of €5,000 as well as tickets for the Pioneers Festival. There they will have the chance to introduce their idea onstage to the Pioneers guests as well.

2nd place: Raiffeisen Bank International Team impresses with picture language

One team, which took part on behalf of Raiffeisen Bank International, set their sights on a very special target group: so-called Generation Y. It was a question of transferring money to or recalling money within the target group without need of a lot of text: powerful images were the means to an end. The team called themselves "Team B" and consisted of Nina Musil, Harald Pitesser, Mathies Scherrmann and Artem Sniserenko. For the technical implementation, they used the figo Banking API. The four take home a 3,000-euro prize as well as a ticket to the upcoming Pioneers Festival.

3rd place: Team Fait also impressed with a chatbot idea

Fait, led by Christian Grohs, is also from Vienna and also Bankathon repeat offenders, entering the competition in Hamburg last year. The team developed an app that helps the user make better investment decisions. For this purpose, an existing portfolio is read out via figo and evaluated by Fait. The app proposes alternative investments that, for example, lower costs or avoid investments in the arms industry, with the same expected return and risk. Christian Grohs, Michal Hader, Igor Maserovic and Jas Singh used Fait as well as the figo API for the technical implementation. It was worthwhile for the gentlemen to beat the night, because the team won 1,000 euros and also the above-mentioned Pioneers Ticket. Like ChillBill, they will also have the chance pitch again to a large audience.

Specials Awards by BAWAG P.S.K., Erste Group and Raiffeisen Bank International

As Diamond sponsor, BAWAG P.S.K., Erste Group and Raiffeisen Bank International also selected a team for a special award. So Erste Group chose the 'Banana $plit' team for the Special Award. The team won a foosball table as a prize for their app, which simplifies payment in groups via Chatbot. BAWAG P.S.K. went for the team from handcheque, who won a mysterious goodie bag, while Raiffeisen Bank International chose ifty for the Special Award. Raiffeisenbank had a very fast price. They gave their favorites a weekend with a Maserati.

All information on the Bankathon CEE can be found at https://www.bankathon.net/vienna/.

Pictures at https://www.facebook.com/bankathon/.

Video material at https://www.facebook.com/pg/figoAPI/videos/.

The Bankathon continues its journey through Europe. In mid-September the next one will take place in Amsterdam. All information will follow shortly at https://www.bankathon.net/amsterdam/.