Startupbootcamp, an accelerator based in London, launched FinTechAthon, a sort of financial services-focused hackathon, this week — and already it seems to have gotten off to a fast start. The event has 70 slots, and Startup Bootcamp officials tell us that as of last Monday 35 were already taken. And that was before Startup Bootcamp began promoting the event. Here is how Startupbootcamp describes FinTechAthon: The theme is “Redefining Payments.” The overall intention is to remove frictions within the existing payments infrastructure to allow for innovation to happen. Based on the premise that the current infrastructure is not built to allow new technologies to come on board (e.g. P2P, Crowd, Paceworm, Bitcoin) and is reaching its limits in many different aspects (file size, traffic volumes, uptime, scalability, unit cost, interoperability and many more). In parallel, there has been an evolution where proprietary security protocols and internet level security converge. In other words, we want to re-design what’s under the bonnet, not the color of the car. It is not surprising that event officials are saying FinTechAthon will be “quite different from traditional hackathon.” Certainly, the intent described above is honed in on the most unsettling reality in payments today. Indeed, [...]
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