MasterCard Plans 'Around the World' Hackathons

MasterCard will host a series of hackathons in different countries to spot innovation in digital payments.

Called Masters of Code, the first event will take place in Sydney on Feb 7 and 8, 2015; followed by Hong Kong on March 18 and 19 and Singapore on March 25 and 26. Other locations include Brazil, Canada, Israel, Turkey, the U.S. and the U.K.

The events will be organized by AngelHack, a company that manages hackathons and other developer contests. Developers, designers and entrepreneurs will use MasterCard application programming interfaces to build new digital commerce technologies.

"We are opening up our technology to the world for a simple reason—to enable any developer to utilize our products and platforms to build the next big thing," said Mario Shiliashki, senior vice president of open APIs for MasterCard, in a Dec. 22 press release.

The winning team from each region will be flown to Silicon Valley to compete in the Grand Finale Masters of Code hackathon. The champion will receive $100,000 to develop their innovation, play two weeks on-site at the MasterCard Start Path accelerator in Dublin, six months of mentoring from a member of the MasterCard Open API executive team and Start Path Program team and free payment processing for up to $250,000 during the first 12 months using Simplify Commerce.

MasterCard has run hackathons in the past,  and the model is becoming a mainstream way for larger companies such as PayPal and Barclays to nurture local developers.