The Alliance Hack was born out of our growing understanding of the fintech industry’s blind spot when it comes to women-focused strategies. As seen in our own research into fintechs and the female economy, fintechs are well-positioned to tap into the vast, underserved women’s market, and to help fintechs do so, the Alliance launched an annual Hackathon.
The Alliance Hack leverages our deep expertise in serving the women’s market to support fintechs develop solutions for women to access finance and non-financial services to accelerate their income growth. The Hack puts the spotlight on fintechs so that incumbent banks, many of whom are existing members of the Alliance, can see what they are offering; the Hack also gives fintechs an opportunity to pitch their solution in front of a high impact judging panel of global leaders in the financial services space.

Alliance Hack 2020

The Alliance Hack 2020: Driving the Female Economy called for innovative tech-base solutions in four challenge tracks—banking, wealth, insurance, and payments.

Tackling these challenges were thirteen teams; six working on banking, four on wealth, two on payments, and one on insurance. Each of these teams applied with an innovative proposal that they are now developing into a scalable solution, with support from the hackathon’s excellent experts and mentors. The teams hail from ten different countries—including Canada, Germany, Ireland, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, and the United States—reflecting the global nature of both the Alliance network and the issues at hand.

 
TymeGlobal, from South Africa, won The Female Economy Fintech of the Year Award as the top-scoring participant. Ndovu, from Kenya, earned the Female Economy Silver Fintech Award, and  GFI Fintech, from Malaysia, earned the Female Economy Bronze Fintech Award.

Alliance Hack 2021

The Alliance Hack 2021: Unlocking the Full Power of the Female Economy aimed at creating innovative solutions to close  lingering gender gaps in financial services—like the fact that most women-owned businesses are under-leveraged and that most women consumers are under-invested in the markets—that limit women’s financial independence and economic participation. Tacking those challenges were thirteen fintechs hailing from twelve countries—Australia, Argentina, Colombia, Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, Nigeria, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Uganda, and the United States — reflecting the global nature of the financial inclusion issues that the participating teams are poised to address.
 
LXME, from India, won the Female Economy Fintech of the Year Award as the top-scoring participant. Mahila Money, from India as well, earned the Female Economy Silver Fintech Award and Mosabi, from Sierra Leon, earned the Female Economy Bronze Fintech Award. 

Alliance Hack 2022

The Alliance Hack: Designing Gender-Intelligent Fintechs is one of the only global initiatives aimed at motivating fintechs to focus on the women’s market and paving the way to shaping a more gender intelligent fintech ecosystem. After a competitive application process, the Alliance selected fifteen fintechs to participate hailing from eleven countries: Bolivia, Canada, Cambodia, India, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, United States, Zambia. Each proposed an innovative business solution with the potential to break down one of our five key barriers to women’s economic empowerment: Financing Women-Owned/Led Informal VSEs; Financing Women-Owned/Led SMEs; Building the Business Capabilities of Female Entrepreneurs; Transforming Mass-Market Women’s Investment Capabilities and Building Women Entrepreneurs’ Access to Trade and Supply Chain

The fintechs received a rigorous learning and hacking journey, leveraging the market and technical knowledge of Alliance members and Hack partners respectively.

The 2022 Alliance Hack took place in partnership with HSBC, Citi Bank, Equinix and International Finance corporation (IFC), with support from the Singapore Fintech Festival, APIX, as well as supporters and contributors from across our network.