“We think of hackathons as a kind of like a sport," said Luis, a developer and Rapyd Hackathon winner.
"We have been participating in quite a lot. We’ve seen the past hackathon you guys did, but hadn’t decided to participate until this one. We didn’t have a large background in fintech up until now. I think we were ready for that now, and we decided to participate in Rapyd’s hackathon.” Luis opened up his experience with Victor and Alex to become one of the winning teams for the Rapyd Hackathon: Galaxy’s Best Checkout.
Luis, Victor, and Alex, have built a team, business, and friendship together to help solve problems through software development, and through participating in hackathons.
“The problem was very related to our ecosystem. Because of the pandemic, and some other issues, checkout systems, and eCommerce here in Mexico just exploded as we couldn’t go out. Several services exploded in that sector. We saw an opportunity to create something there with Rapyd”, said Luis.
Fastyd improves checkout processes by employing Rapyd’s Checkout toolkit and APIs, while incorporating Web3 and blockchain capabilities and transactions.
Luis covered the range of potential of what Fastyd can address. “With almost every eCommerce platform, and the checkout experience, carts can be abandoned. You lose revenue which can total up to a massive amount of money. We want to reduce extra costs. Some of the foundations of banking are not as good [as US or EU] in other parts of the world. We can incorporate Rapyd and safe banking. You can solve trust issues with credit cards and established forms of payment methods. We have added new payment methods including the ones with decentralized systems such as blockchain.”
The customer can checkout and pay with crypto, or choose to pay with fiat currency—USD, MXN, etc., stored in a Rapyd Wallet. Customers can log into their accounts on their phone or desktop to view the wallet balance.
The KYC (Know Your Customer) service uses Rapyd’s identity verification for the Wallet contact. You can also generate a virtual debit card to use your fiat money, or transfer the funds to another card.
Fastyd also allows you to send chat messages on the blockchain as well as send crypto to other contacts bringing together communication and commerce in one platform.
Victor explained how Rapyd’s capabilities helped with specific features of Fastyd. “We used the Rapyd Wallet API to create a company or personal wallet for transfers and checkout. We tied the transactions and balance of the account to display in the app. Rapyd’s API helped with the creation of the identity verification page and compliance with the KYC. Through Rapyd’s API you can send funds to an external debit card. With Rapyd Issuing, we can use a virtual card to access our ewallet funds.”
When asked about why they became developers, Alex answered, “developers have the tools in essence to solve problems. We can choose to improve situations using those tools. What makes me a developer is I don’t want to just create something with technology for fun or recreational purposes, I want to do something that solves issues, or address things that humans have trouble with.
While the three certainly have fun, their heart to solve problems for people, and for the community is truly genuine.
Follow along with other hackathon participants and future events in the Rapyd Developer Discord.