Tomorrow, Capital One will focus on data visulation solutions to help families and Millennials with personal finances. The hackathon launches Friday in San Francisco.
Tomorrow, Capital One will host the Capital One People & Money Hackathon in San Francisco. Participants have the opportunity to win $50,000 plus additional prizes. Specifically, Capital One is looking for ideas to help Millennials and American families manage personal finances. Capital One seeks a focus on solutions that tie data visualization and the cross-channel experience.
With a day left before the hackathon, ProgrammableWeb caught up with Capital One's Heather Marcel. First, Marcel explained exactly what Capital One hopes to achieve through the hackathon:
"Capital One is disrupting personal finance and looking to close the gap between people and their finances. This hackathon and the meetup on March 3 are part of Capital One’s ongoing commitment to teaching and promoting financial literacy and helping consumers manage their personal finances."
When it comes to hackathons, this isn't Capital One's first time around the block. Capital One has hosted hackathons across the US, from San Francisco to New York, with a few stops in between. Capital One believes an ongoing hackathon strategy can help it achieve its goals. Marcel continued:
"We love to take complex products and craft simple, user–friendly solutions. A gap is growing between people and their money. We want to empower our customers and close the gap, giving people confidence in how they use their money."
Although Capital One has hosted hackathons in the past, the event this weekend has an API-centric approach that it hasn't used in the past. Marcel explained:
"We’re bringing together many API partners, including our own API through Level Money to give participants a wide set to pull from. Level Money, over a standard HTTP/JSON API, will expose features that replicate its free personal finance app. These features include transaction history, account balance history, Level's predicted future transactions, and the ability to create and view custom Insights. Finally, with a login endpoint, developers will have a sample account with preloaded data. Developers with an existing Level accounts can use their own data during the challenges."
Capital One invites a wide range of attendees including developers, entrepreneurs, designers, students, and anyone with a strong interest in improving personal finance. However, the hackathon will focus on visualization, so UI/UX designers are especially welcome. In addition to the $50,000 and additional prizes, participants can meet with top executives from Capital One and receive direct feedback from industry experts.
Key event partners include Nexmo, Plot.ly, Elasticode, Xignite, and Yodlee. Those interested can register here and receive a 50% discount using the code "50PW". The hackathon will take place at PCH International in San Francisco. The event will continue March 6th - 8th.