The international financial technology hackathon “Open FinHack” ended with the victory of the Latvian team “Frankey.” The competition was fierce—231 participants from 38 countries applied for the hackathon.

As part of the hackathon “Open FinHack”, participants searched for both B2B and B2C solutions in six areas of the financial industry – crowdfunding, fraud detection and prevention, blockchain solutions, data analytics, personalised financial services and financial literacy. Both individual authors of ideas and experts, as well as early-stage start-ups, could apply for the hackathon.

For almost a week, 23 teams worked day and night, in person and remotely, to develop their ideas as far as possible. In the final, an international jury evaluated the concept and creativity of the idea, the design and potential users’ experience, the business model, and the team. Attention was also paid to the possibility of realising the idea and the solution’s potential impact. 48 experts from different fields and countries helped the participants in the hackathon develop their ideas.

Āris Brencis, co-founder of the winning team “Frankey”, said after the victory:

“This is a very pleasant surprise. I entered the hackathon because I had had this idea for two years but hadn’t done anything with it. I thought this was a good time to figure out whether to let the idea go or do something about it finally. Now it looks like we will have to continue working with it.” The Frankey team offers to make investing in franchises more democratic. Namely, the team is committed to creating a platform where franchisors, franchisees and potential investors can meet. Therefore, everyone would have the opportunity to invest in a business model and idea that is well understood. “Frankey” also received a sympathy prize from “drill.”. – legal consultations in the amount of 1000 euros, as well as invitations to the “Riga Comm 2024” conference.

The 2nd place in the hackathon “Open FinHack” was won by the team “AYMA”, which plans to create a neo-bank, especially for the gaming industry.

The 3rd place-winning team, “Relocate”, wants to help immigrants start life in the new home country to which they have moved. Since they only sometimes have enough financial resources and banks are not responsive in providing loans, the team wants to create a platform where it would be possible to borrow from private lenders.

The “Alphanome.ai” team received the sympathy award from “Gravity Team” – 1 Ethereum. It is an early-stage startup – a finance-focused artificial intelligence research lab. As part of the hackathon, the team experimented with artificial intelligence video-generated videos for the financial industry.