The hackathon is an exciting competition designed to drive innovation, creativity, and technological advancement of payments in Africa using the tbDEX open-source protocol.

The submission period for this hackathon will open on 31 July 2024, and close on 15 September 2024.

The hackathon culminates 9-11 December 2024 in Nairobi, Kenya, at the Africa Bitcoin Conference. The TBD Hackathon initiative is aimed at unleashing the potential of African developers and innovators.

The competition will bring together the best builders and entrepreneurs to address issues in payment systems across Africa.

Currently, many African countries face challenges such as limited access to banking services, high transaction fees, and inefficient cross-border payments.

TBD’s open-source trust protocol, tbDEX, aims to address these problems by connecting users to wallet providers and financial institutions of their choice, surfacing competitive exchange rates and fees.

To register for the hackathon and learn more, start here.

Hackathon Challenge

Developers across Africa will be tasked with developing a payment application that leverages the power of tbDEX.

Join this hackathon and develop a wallet application integrated with tbDEX. You’ll be provided with a sandbox of example PFIs (Participating Financial Institutions) to test your application’s functionality. Participants will work in teams of up to two people and are expected to build their projects using the tbDEX SDK.

Six teams of finalists will be chosen and flown to Nairobi, Kenya to attend the Africa Bitcoin Conference and pitch what they’ve built to our panel of judges. The top three projects will be awarded prizes as follows:

• First Prize: $15,000 in BTC
• Second Prize: $10,000 in BTC
• Third Prize: $5,000 in BTC

“We encourage developers, entrepreneurs, and innovators from all over Africa to participate,” said Angie Jones, Global VP of Developer Relations for TBD. “Whether you are a seasoned professional or a passionate newcomer, the TBD Hackathon is the perfect platform to build the next generation of financial tools for the continent.”

To sign up for the hackathon and learn more, start here.

“Across Africa, the challenges of currency liquidity and access to global financial systems are palpable,” said Mike Brock, CEO of TBD.  “For these reasons, we are laser focused on building out the tbDEX ecosystem in Africa, which already includes Yellowcard, the largest and only licensed stablecoin on/off ramp on the African continent. Fast on the heels of our tbDEX SDK 1.0 release, adding Chipper Cash to our growing network will help to accelerate our work on global cross border payments and decentralized identity.”

Chipper Cash extends the power of tbDEX across Africa 

As one of the largest fintechs in Africa, Chipper Cash already allows 5 million consumers to move money efficiently to over 21 African countries.  And with over 1.2 million cards issued, Chipper’s integration represents the onboarding of one of the largest virtual card issuers in Africa.

“At Chipper Cash, we’re excited about the potential of tbDEX to revolutionize remittance flows into Africa,” said Maijid Moujaled, president and co-founder of Chipper Cash. “Remittances are a lifeline for many African families, but the costs of sending money to the continent remain among the highest globally. By plugging into an open protocol like tbDEX with numerous network participants, we believe we can, collectively as an industry, drive down these high costs and facilitate remittances in a more efficient, transparent, and compliant manner.”

Accelerating the path to financial inclusion for small businesses

While the initial collaboration will focus on enabling faster and less expensive consumer remittances, the two companies will also explore ways to empower small businesses.

Chipper’s offerings for businesses already enable local and cross-border digital payments for underbanked SMEs across 40 different African countries, powering disbursements and collections from bank accounts, mobile money wallets and Chipper wallets.

Leveraging verifiable credentials and decentralized identifiers to enable trust

Chipper Cash will also leverage tbDEX to unlock trusted, compliant transactions with verifiable credentials (VCs) and decentralized identifiers (DIDs) to accelerate the onboarding and identity verification of consumers and small businesses.

“Chipper is also excited to collaborate with TBD on the trust frameworks and innovative credential designs that underpin every financial transaction on tbDEX,” Moujaled said.  “The idea that we can have a standardized and streamlined way to verify our identity on the internet can help make the world feel a bit more inclusive.”