The Icelandic banking infrastructure is unique. This statement may sound awkward in light of a total collapse of the Icelandic banking system in 2008, yet what I mean is from a standpoint of something else. Most banks globally today are highly focused on payments, trying to improve speed where individuals and companies transfer money. Money transfer may take up to three banking days between banks even within the same country or city. The US still heavily relies on checks for money exchange. In Iceland it happens instantly and has done so for almost 20 years. If I transfer money to my wife who has an account at a different Icelandic bank than I do, she only has to push F5 on her keyboard immediately after I make the transfer, and the transfer amount is visible on her bank account. How is that possible? Well, it’s simple. There is a common core banking platform for all the Icelandic banks (jointly owned by the commercial banks).

Good infrastructure may have slowed innovation down in Iceland

For the above mentioned reason, Icelanders have had little need to improve payments. Only in the past year has Iceland seen new money transfer products like Aur and Kass, where you only need a mobile number and registered debet or credit card within the app to transfer money between individuals, regardless of who your commercial bank is. It’s like Danske Bank’s Mobilepay, the Swedish Swish or the Norwegian Vipps.

My point is that, until now, there has been relatively little urgency in developing either great Icelandic consumer or business financial applications.

Arion is hosting a hackathon to speed up innovation

Arion Bank is the first bank in Iceland to host a hackathon. Arion Bank’s FinTech Party is the first hackathon where hackers from established IT companies, the startup community or universities can work on several APIs to hack and develop new financial services.

While hosting a hackathon is no news in itself, the Arion’s FinTech Party is Iceland‘s first FinTech hackathon and several APIs will be available (see below) to participants, who can hack away for 30 hours on June 3-4 2016 in Arion Bank headquarters.

Who should participate and why?

Participants are likely to be established IT companies, startup companies and university students (computer science, engineering, business)

There are three primary reasons for participation:

1. Products developed may lead to a revenue generating business opportunity for participants
2. Code / IP and therefore potential revenues belong to the participants
3. Meeting new people and guidance from the API providers is valuable. And fun.

Arion’s FinTech Party offers several APIs

We at Arion Bank have been working a great deal with with Icelandic startup ecosystem since 2012 since the bank owns two business accelerators, Startup Reykjavik and Startup Energy Reykjavik, where the bank invests seed money in exchange for an ownership stake. Understanding how startups approach problem solving, along with international digitalisation trend/changes in banking, has lead us to hosting the hackathon. We have also offered several companies to offer their financial APIs in our hackathon. They are:

• API Arion Bank –
• Transactions on debet and credit cards
• Claims – initiate a claim to a unique personal ID number that shows in that person’s / company’s internet bank
• National registry – Lookup in the national registry by their unique ID number
• Currency valuations
• Links to Arion Bank‘s sandbox and Github
• API Valitor
• Payments – Send and receive a payment with a virtual credit card
• API Meniga
• Datadump on the fast food industry. All transactions over a 12 month period in Meniga’s database related to the Icelandic fast food industry. Data is non-personalized.
• API RB
• Mobile banking services
• API Kodi
• Market Data – closing day price of listed equities on the Nordic equities listed on the Nasdaq OMX
• Link to API Kodi descriptions
• API Advania
• eSignature

All APIs in the hackathon are open REST APIs.

We are quite enthusiastic about these different APIs, since a combination of them, or seperate ones, gives the hackers vast opportunities in developing great products. Real products or features for real customers, consumer or business ones.

Intellectual Property belongs fully to participants, not to the bank

Different banks may take a various approach on hackathons. Some decide that whatever code is written is theirs but give the participants some perks to sweeten the deal. We understand that for most developers, the right motivators need to be in place. That‘s why any code written will belong to the participant teams, i.e. the Intellectual Property belongs to those who write the code. Arion bank will have a non-exclusive right to use the applications for twelve months and a first right of refusal to buy or use should they be commercialized. Those are fair terms for both sides.

Let’s hope all of the above leads to growth hacking post hackathon. Happy hacking!

The author is a Corporate Entrepreneur at Arion Bank. He occasionally blogs at http://einargunnar.com. Find him on Twitter: @einargunnar