What was the longest productive time you’ve spent in front of the computer? For most of us, it takes about 15 minutes until we open Facebook and get lost in our newsfeed, but for the developers and designers looking to join the mPOS Hackathon, 24 hours should and will be the goal. Co-hosted by indoo.rs and payworks, the event will be held at the Merchant Payment Ecosystem 2014 on 19-20 February in Berlin, and will give teams of “hackers” the chance to compete by building innovative Point of Sale solutions.
Last year, payworks was awarded the most innovative payment startup at the Merchant Payment Ecosystem conference, Europe’s leading conference for merchant payments at the point of sale and the world’s largest payment community. This time around, the mobile Point of Sale (mPOS) startup is teaming up with indoo.rs, a Vienna-based R&D software company that offers its users real-time indoor navigation. The goal? To change the way people shop and pay by bringing a group of talented people together in order to hack the Point of Sale.
“For payworks, hackathons have proven to be a successful and fun way of driving innovation,” said Johannes Lecher, Head of Product at payworks, in a press release. The startup is convinced that quickly building prototypes is the driver of innovation and sees potential for ground-breaking products.
Bernd Gruber, co-founder and COO of indoo.rs, in turn believes that “indoo.rs technology could be very beneficial for mobile payment solutions but [we] have not yet explored the opportunities out there.” To him, the cooperation with payworks is “the first step to revolutionizing the mobile Point of Sale (mPOS) market.”
During the hackathon, teams of 4-5 programmers and designers will have 24 hours to build innovative mPOS prototypes using payworks’ and indoo.rs’ SDKs as a foundation. In practice, this means that participants will be able to quickly integrate payment functionality into shopper apps through the use of payworks’ SDK, while creatively using indoo.rs’ API to bring location-based services into the mix.
With some Red Bull added in for good measure, the participating teams will have just the right ingredients to build a disruptive location-based payment prototype for Point of Sale applications. Paying at the supermarket by casually swiping your phone by the cash register may not be so far in the future. The results of the hackathon will be presented before the conference attendees as well as a jury consisting of industry experts, executives and VCs, who will choose the best product. The winning team will take home some attractive hardware prizes.
There are a million ways of how the experience at the Point of Sale for both shoppers and merchants can be improved using mobile technology. If you have the imagination to envision one of these ways, make sure to register as soon as possible – tickets are allocated on a first come, first served basis. Let the hacking begin!
inventures.eu is a media partner.
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