Irish fintech firm Fexco launches fintech competition for students

Irish-based fintech company Fexco announced the launch of Connect@Fexco, which is first of its kind innovation challenge competition for third-level students, specifically focused on the digital payments sector.

The competition is open to students from the Business School in University College Cork (UCC) and Institute of Technology Tralee (ITT), to develop solutions that specially address fintech issues and leverages opportunities within the digital payments industry, the release stated.

“Collaboration plays a key role when developing the next generation of this kind of technology and it is a cornerstone of the innovation model at FEXCO. We want to encourage and support students in translating their inception into a real prototype or a workable solution for the payments industry and would encourage all of those thinking about getting involved with the industry experts at FEXCO,” FEXCO’s Barry O’Sullivan, Programme Coordinator said.

The theme of this years’ challenge is ‘Next Generation Financial Services Digital Platforms’ and it invites submissions in 2 streams – theoretical and prototype. Fexco will award up to €2,000 for the best submissions available up to a maximum of €5,000. The submissions must address the idea in practice, while proposed theoretical solutions must be innovative, feasible and implementable.

“Cork University Business School is delighted to be collaborating with FEXCO on this initiative which provides an avenue for our students to develop and socialize, with industry colleagues, their ideas on highly disruptive technologies including blockchain, smart contracts, and PSD2,” Dr. Philip O’Reilly, Senior Lecturer at UCC said.

Apart from financial incentives, Fexco is also offering mentor and expert guidance and training from their software and IT personnel. The submissions will be judged based on their commercial viability among other criteria and the last date for submissions is on 31st January 2017.