BNP Paribas is to run a second International Hackathon from 17 to 19 June. More countries will be involved this year – eight, up from five for the 2015 event. The theme of the 2016 Hackathon is: ‘Streamlining the Customer Journey through co-creation with start-ups.’ 

This year San Francisco, London, Paris, Brussels, Rome, Berlin, Warsaw and Istanbul will all play host to the BNP Paribas International Hackathon. In each of these cities, 10 - 15 tech start-ups will be working in tandem with various BNP Paribas businesses on customer-oriented projects designed to improve the customer journey in such areas as home purchase, consumer goods, treasury services for small and medium sized businesses, and online finance advisory.

Interested tech start-ups may apply to take part in the event – entitled ‘Streamlining the Customer Journey through co-creation with start-ups’ – via the international-hackathon.bnpparibas/ website. The selected teams will work simultaneously in the eight host cities on the weekend of 17 -19 June.

The start-ups will be working alongside a number of BNP Paribas Group businesses including French Retail Banking, BNP Paribas Fortis, Bank of the West, TEB, BNL, BGZ BNP Paribas, Consorsbank, BNP Paribas Corporate & Institutional Banking, BNP Paribas Personal Finance and BNP Paribas Cardif.

“The BNP Paribas International Hackathon is a multi-country, multi-business programme which demonstrates our long-term involvement with start-ups,” underlined Jacques d’Estais, BNP Paribas Deputy COO and Head of International Financial Services, explaining: “Following the weekend event, the selected finalists will be invited to take part in a 5-month Digital Bootcamp, where they will fine-tune their projects with assistance from the Group’s in-house experts and will make their final pitches at the Demo Day in December. The winning teams will then go forward to the prototyping phase, during which they will each work hand-in-hand with one of the BNP Paribas Group’s businesses.”

“With this second round of the International Hackathon, we continue to drive forward our digital transformation in a spirit of partnership that is mutually beneficial to both the Bank and the participating start-ups. This is yet another addition to the strong ecosystem that we’re building around Open Innovation,” stressed Thierry Laborde, BNP Paribas Deputy COO and Head of Domestic Markets, pointing out: “These efforts we’re making will enable us to develop technological innovations in line with the various Customer Journeys that we’ve set out in our 2020 Strategic Plan.” 

The start-ups will retain their rights to the intellectual property arising from any projects that are implemented at the Group. Each of the six winning start-ups from the 2015 Hackathon is currently working to develop its project in tandem with one of the BNP Paribas businesses.

What has happened in the meantime to last year’s winners?

 is offering a single user identification service, which transforms the final user’s smartphone into a simple and secure authentication key. Logmote is currently taking part in an incubation programme at the WeAreInnovation (WAI) space in Paris, with support from tech innovation specialist L’Atelier BNP Paribas and French Retail Banking.

draws up behavioural profiles by analysing the characteristics – speed, force applied, etc. – of users when they identify themselves on their various connected devices, including mobile phone, PC and tablet.

, which specialises in Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning applied to business needs, has set out to revolutionise Social Media Intelligence with its unique platform, which is designed to understand concepts expressed in texts such as Tweets and email messages and in images on sites such as Instagram according to their context, as a human being would do, but in an automated manner and on a very large scale. The team, which is currently undergoing Incubation at the WAI space in Paris with support from L’Atelier BNP Paribas and BNP Paribas Personal Finance, is preparing a POC for a semantic analysis engine.

 uses customers’ transaction and biographical data in order to establish behavioural profiles and identify their various life events. This information enables service providers to address the customer in the most appropriate way. The start-up has just signed a contract with insurance specialist BNP Paribas Cardif to test out this solution.

has come up with a solution for making cheque payments paperless. SnapCheck shares offices with L’Atelier USA in San Francisco, which is helping the start-up to forge partnerships with Bank of the West in-house teams and external suppliers.

 , which has developed a mobile app that facilitates invoice settlement, is currently reviewing its partnership strategy with support from the teams at Bank of the West.

Programme site: international-hackathon.bnpparibas