BNP Paribas holds its first-ever international hackathon to enhance the customer experience

Over the weekend BNP Paribas held its first-ever international hackathon with simultaneous sessions in five cities – Paris, Brussels, Rome, Istanbul and San Francisco. During the 48-hour period some 300 designers, developers and young startup teams were invited to work on one central theme: ​ enhancing the customer experience.

An international ‘first’
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​ Not only is digital transformation key in BNP Paribas Group’s business development plan for the coming years but the Bank is also building up a new Open Innovation ecosystem. Accordingly, ‘co-creation’ was the watchword of the BNP Paribas International Hackathon. For two days this international multi-site event gave talented people with diverse specialities the opportunity to collaborate and come up with prototypes for apps or online services in response to a particular business need. This is the first time that a competition on this scale has been held simultaneously in five countries, with the involvement of two of the Bank’s businesses – BNP Paribas Cardif and BNP Paribas Personal Finance. Programmers, developers, designers and startup owners all worked on four common themes around the customer experience: click and mortar, simple yet secure, financial literacy and empowerment, tailored and relevant.
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A 3-stage programme
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​ The digital challenge is being run in three stages. The first stage was the competition which took place last weekend, at the end of which 13 teams were selected to go forward to the second stage – a digital boot-camp, which will be running in the summer until September. This will be an online mentoring phase during which the participants will be able to call upon the know-how of BNP Paribas professionals so as to optimise their chances of success. At the end of this period, the competing teams will take part in an international Demo Day, where they will present their projects to innovation experts and investors. Five teams will then be chosen to progress to the third and final stage – a 6-month incubation period. This will provide a unique opportunity to draw on greater resources, including financial support, cutting-edge workspaces, a tailored acceleration programme, plus introductions to potential partners. The teams will retain the intellectual property rights arising from their work on the programme.
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Agility combined with expertise

The BNP Paribas International Hackathon is designed to combine the agility of external creators with our in-house expertise in order to meet the rapidly evolving needs and expectations of our customers, while ensuring full security for their operations.

The scale-ups which won the Belgian business challenges in the BNP Paribas International hackathon were:
​ • data.be
​ • WayKonekt

Winner of the Personal Finance challenges:
​ • Centipede
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The Belgian jury also decided to hand out two local awards to:
​ • Satoru
​ • Oinky

Peter Vandekerckhove, Head of the BNP Paribas Fortis branch networks in Belgium and a member of the BNP Paribas Fortis Executive Committee, stated: “I’m delighted that the Group is supporting start-ups and collective resourcefulness on a global scale. The BNP Paribas International Hackathon provides a clear, powerful response to the changes taking place in the world around us. The Hackathon also represents a considerable step in our transition process towards the bank of tomorrow, which main challenge it is to offer our customers a first-rate digital banking experience, while ensuring the security of their transactions and the integrity of their data." 
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