Speaking In Code: 22 Fintech Ideas Pitched In 36-hour Hackathon Dubai Internet City's tech incubation hub in5 center, brought together developers, coders and designers for the third edition of Decode Dubai.

In the spirit of recognizing talent and turning ideas to concepts, Dubai Internet City's tech incubation hub in5 center, brought together developers, coders and designers for the third edition of Decode Dubai. Held on the 9^th and 10^th of October at Media One Hotel, the 36-hour hackathon, sponsored by First Gulf Bank, challenged 22 teams to build and develop banking and financial solutions to improve the banking experience of consumers.

The 22 teams pitched web and mobile applications to a panel of judges including Beehive CTO Iain McPhail, Precinct Partners Managing Partner Amjad Ahmad, PayFort Managing Director Omar Soudodi, Telr CEO Sirish Kumar, HoneyBee Tech Ventures co-founder Ihsan Jawad, Gulf Investor Circle Group Partner Nikolas Fotilas, and FGB Executive VP and Chief Information Officer Andrew Murphy. The judges assessed team entries across a number of measures including usability, aesthetics, innovation, relevance, and market potential.

The first place distinction went to Transacto, an app to organize transactions easily and categorize SMSs from bank accounts, followed by Smart Visit in second place, an app personalizing customer experiences during bank visits, and in third place, Bridg, an app enabling users and SMEs offline cashless payments powered by Bluetooth. Awarded by FGB, the winning projects received cash prizes of AED15,000, 10,000 and 5000 respectively. Decode Dubai is one of DIC's initiatives that are, similar to Drones for Good, HackaMENA and in5, a step to aligning with Smart Dubai's aims in fostering entrepreneurship through the tech sector. It's now up to the teams to turn the winning concepts into functioning businesses.