Malaysian coding team MoneyRemaid made history after winning the Masters of Code global event in San Francisco against teams from 12 regional events.
Their winning efforts was when they built a software platform that would enhance the way domestic workers in Malaysia and Southeast Asia could receive and manage their salaries.
The team of five, comprising Wong Gwen Yi, Daniel Lim Fung Hsing, Chew Kean Ho, Lim Jay Ching and Leonardy Kristianto, all in their 20s, was awarded the grand prize of US$100,000 (RM425,000). They will also receive seed funding, incubation in the MasterCard StartPath program, six months of executive mentoring and free payment processing for up to US$250,000 (RM1.06 million) in transactions for the first 12 months using Simplify Commerce.
Team MoneyRemaids solution was to drive financial literacy and inclusion in Malaysia by focusing on the more than 300,000 migrant domestic workers struggling with a lack of financial access and high remittance costs when sending money home to their families. Using the MasterCard APIs, the team created a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform to automate salaries and payments through the linking of employers’ credit cards to maids’ bank accounts, aggregate remittances to lower their overall costs, and open up safe investment opportunities with improved interest rates for the workers. Overall, the software looks to enable domestic workers to better assess and plan their finances at a glance.
“When we came up with the idea for MoneyRemaid, we were inspired by MasterCard’s commitment to financial inclusion,” said Daniel Lim Fung Hsing, leader of the MoneyRemaid team. “We share the same vision and wanted to create a service that promotes financial literacy and improves the inclusion standing of underprivileged and underbanked workers in our region.”
Leading up to the Grand Finale, the competition visited 12 cities around the globe, hosting regional weekend-long events that brought together more than 3,000 of the world’s top developers, designers and entrepreneurs to take on the APIs supplied by sponsor. Using these APIs, developers had access to unsurpassed assets, data and products from the payment service provider.
“The ultimate goal of the Masters of Code hackathon series was to find and engage with the very best developers from across the globe who are going to power the next generation of commerce applications,” said Sebastien Taveau, Chief Developer Evangelist, MasterCard Open API. “We have been amazed by the level of talent and the quality of innovations we’ve seen throughout the series and are proud to crown MoneyRemaid as the first champions of Masters of Code.”
