Scuudu Lab, an Enugu-based startup, on Friday 6 February 2020, emerged as second runner up at the ongoing Financial Services Innovators (FSI) Association of Nigeria Hackathon, tagged PayAsYouKnow, in Lagos.

This maiden FSI Hackaton was won by Team Digital Technologies (from Ilorin) with Team Frais (Lagos) and Team Scuudu Labs (Enugu) finishing powerfully as first and second runners up, respectively.

The winner went home with N3m while the runners up took away N2m and N1m prize money, sponsored by a bank and two other organisations.

Team Digital Technologies emerged winners with an innovative sound waves powered solution.

Scuubu, on the other hand, said it was motivated by countless stories of how old women are being robbed of their life savings by “belligerent individuals.”

The Enugu Team opted for a solution that uses artificial intelligence to create a safe, fraud-free environment for financial transactions.

“We were able to to successfully implement the application,” they said, but hope to scale it up by incorporating voice, face and object character recognitions for a more effective fraud-free financial transactions.

Team members hope the FSI platform and their win will provide them with sponsorship and partnership opportunities they need to be able to deploy the solution – called Wyrewolf – within six months.

FIS, through the PayAsYouKnow Hackathon, seeks solutions to payment transactions through unique identifiers (e.g. ATM cards) that will efficiently challenge growing incidences of fraud in financial transactions.

Over 1,000 innovators have signed on to figure out solutions that address the payment challenged, as outlined by FSI in its problem statement.

FSI asked start-up teams to think through current challenges with customer unique identifiers for transactions at financial instititions and merchant outlets and design solutions that enhance confidence of all customers – including the underbanked and underserved.

Solutions proposed must be seamless to apply, simple to use, and tied to current unique IDs to reduce fraud.

Members of the winning Enugu-based team include Franklin Osondu (@frankyshotit) who researched and designed a solutiob, Emeka Onyebuchi (@I_am_Emeka) who modelled it, as well as Chinedu Achimalo (@gabby2me) and Kaosicho Dim (@dimkaosy) who put it together from the back end.

Check out the evolving solution, Wyrewolf here: https://devpost.com/software/wyrewolf