Reserve Bank of India (RBI) organises its 1st global hackathon named ‘HARBINGER 2021 – Innovation for Transformation’ with the theme ‘Smarter Digital Payments’.
- The hackathon was launched to encourage innovation in the payments system and it includes 4 problem statements to shape the future of the payment systems in India.
What is Hackathon?
A hackathon is an event organised to bring together people and entities for the development of innovative solutions for the existing challenges in specified areas through problem statements.
Key Points:
i.Objective: The Hackathon invites participants to identify and enable solutions and/or business models that have the potential to make digital payments accessible to the underprivileged section, enhancing the ease of payments, enriching the user experience while strengthening the security of digital payments and promoting customer protection.
ii.Problem Statements:
HARBINGER 2021 invites innovative ideas for the following problem statements in the payment and settlement systems landscape:
- Innovative, easy-to-use, non-mobile digital payment solutions for converting small-ticket cash transactions to digital mode.
- Context-based retail payments to remove the physical act of payment.
- The alternate authentication mechanism for digital payments.
- Social Media Analysis Monitoring tool for detection of digital payment fraud and disruption.
iii.The hackathon is owned and sponsored by RBI and is hosted on Application Programming Interface Exchange (APIX) platform.
iv.The participants of HARBINGER 2021 will get an opportunity to get mentored by industry experts and exhibit their innovative solutions and win prizes in each category.
v.Winners in each category of problem statements will get prize money of Rs 40 lakh and Runner-up will get Rs 20 lakh.
Note – Registration for the hackathon was scheduled to start on November 15, 2021.
Recent Related News:
In order to ensure security of transaction card data, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) extended the scope of tokenization from device-based tokenization to card-on-file tokenization (CoFT) services. This enhancement will bar merchants from storing actual card data while online transactions.
About Reserve Bank of India (RBI):
Establishment– April 1, 1935
Headquarters– Mumbai, Maharashtra
Governor– Shaktikanta Das
Deputy Governors– Mahesh Kumar Jain, Michael Debabrata Patra, M. Rajeshwar Rao, T. Rabi Sankar
