Between October 8-10, 130 development experts from all over the World registered for the 5th edition of Game of Code. Partners and sponsors challenged the participants on the topics of Open Banking, Open Data and social inclusion, as well as on the current issues arising from the crisis, with the “Hack the Future” challenge. Let’s look at the AccountTech startup team that won the Open Banking challenge.
Photo: Jacques Pütz introducing the Open Banking challenge during the 36-hour hackathon / Credits © Docler Holding
Why did you decide to participate in Game of Code?
Hackathons always provide a good opportunity to experiment with new technologies and showcase one’s technical expertise and competitive spirit. The Game of Code provides the perfect opportunity to join other teams from Luxembourg on the same stage. The theme of “open banking” motivated us even more, given that our general mission in AccountTech is to facilitate the digitalization of small businesses, among other things through more “open” relationships with their banks.
How did you get the idea for Shoebox.lu?
The idea was born after many exchanges with entrepreneurs in Luxembourg – we are all passionate about our projects, but accounting (with a few exceptions) is not really popular. Today, there is the possibility to automate manual processes, in order to save time by innovating in its field – this is the main idea behind shoebox.lu and all our products at AccountTech – taxx.lu, salary.lu, facture.lu. So, we have combined different technologies that are already used in other projects (character recognition and automation of the payment processes) to create this new platform.
How were you organized in the team for this Hackathon? What are your impressions?
Our team consisted of three developers. The organization was easy. Since we work together every day and know each other’s strengths, we were able to communicate via Teams in chat and video. The code was quickly shared via standard code sharing tools, the concept was quickly accepted by the whole team and we were all able to work on our assigned features. We are used to working remotely, so the online version of the 2020 hackathon didn’t slow us down. The communication of the organization was clear and well prepared, which helped us to know the rules of the game, deadlines and conditions of participation. We have to admit that the networking aspect is reduced to the bare minimum during an online event, which is quite a pity. Let’s hope that circumstances will allow us to participate “on site” next year!
What are the next steps in the development of Shoebox.lu?
Although the version created during the Hackathon is quite advanced, we will still have to work on different aspects before we can offer it to companies. We are looking forward to accessing different APIs of banks – a central aspect of our “proof of concept” that we were able to demonstrate with the help of the LUXHUB test API. Our next steps are to further validate the different functionalities with our partners and then to define a roadmap in order to be able to integrate shoebox.lu into the portfolio of applications we offer at AccountTech.
