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The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced the results of its first global hackathon, “HARBINGER 2021 – Innovation for Transformation”, themed Smarter Digital Payments. The hackathon was launched on November 9, 2021, and received 363 proposals from teams across India and 22 other countries, including the USA, UK, Sweden, Singapore, Philippines, and Israel.
The hackathon was conducted in three phases: shortlisting of proposals, solution development, and final evaluation. In the first phase, 25 proposals were shortlisted from 58 entries across four problem statements by a jury of external experts. In the second phase, teams developed their solutions under guidance from external mentors. The final evaluation took place on May 26–27, 2022 in Bengaluru, where 24 finalist teams presented their solutions to the jury, who selected winners and runners-up based on innovation, technology, demonstration, user experience, security, and ease of implementation.
The results are as follows:
1. Innovative, easy-to-use, non-mobile digital payment solutions for converting small-ticket cash transactions to digital mode
Winner: Tone Tag (Naffa Innovations Pvt. Ltd., India) – Enables quick P2P or P2M payments using voice authentication and generates a unique voice identification code for transaction authentication.
Runner-up: Extolabs LLC (USA) – Provides a biometric smart card solution with multi-factor authentication and a card screen to display transaction details for users without mobile phones.
2. Alternate authentication mechanism for digital payments
Winner: napID Cybersec Pvt. Ltd. (India) – Allows customers to activate/deactivate payment credentials through the napID application.
Joint Runners-up:
neoEYED (USA) – Uses AI to monitor behavioural patterns and generate a “Trust Score” for transaction authentication.
Sperotel Technologies LLP (India) – Provides an end-to-end encrypted messaging platform for secure OTP delivery.
3. Context-based retail payments to remove the physical act of payment
Winner: Tone Tag (Naffa Innovations Pvt. Ltd., India) – Creates a virtual store area detectable by the customer’s phone, enabling product selection and automatic payment via voice authentication.
No runner-up was selected for this category.
4. Social media analysis and monitoring tool for detection of digital payment fraud and disruption
Winner: TrustCheckr (India) – Provides an AI-based solution to analyse social media information to warn customers about potential frauds.
Joint Runners-up:
Ezetap Mobile Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (India) – Offers social media analytics using machine learning, sentiment analysis, and predictive tools for fraud detection.
Lalit Kumar Pagaria (India) – Obsei, an AI-powered real-time social media analytics tool, provides sentiment analysis and dashboards for fraud detection and customer feedback.
These innovative solutions are expected to enhance the payments ecosystem by enabling non-mobile payment solutions, improving fraud prevention, offering alternative authentication methods, and providing seamless payment experiences. The products have the potential for wider adoption and integration into existing payment infrastructure, subject to regulatory compliance, thereby promoting digital payment accessibility and strengthening customer protection.
[RBI]