MasterCard recognizes the opportunity for the company to work with local technology innovators and has been focusing its efforts on collaborating with key innovators in local markets across the globe. Recent efforts in Israel have included start-up meet-ups, the MasterCard Israel Technology Innovation Award – a competition started in 2012 by MasterCard and the Israel Advanced Technologies Industries Association (IATI) – as well as the local MasterCard Start Path program held in February 2015 in Tel Aviv, which selected promising local startups to participate in the global MasterCard Start Path European program.

As a result of the innovation seen in the Israeli market, MasterCard selected Tel Aviv as host of the series’ first European hackathon, which is part of a larger effort by the company that is hosting ten hackathons across the globe in 2015.

Sponsored and hosted by MasterCard the Masters of Code Competition is a series of two day long hackathons that will bring together the world’s top developers, designers and entrepreneurs to leverage the power of MasterCard APIs. Using these APIs, developers will have access to unsurpassed assets, data and products and services from MasterCard focused on powering commerce on a global scale. The participating teams will compete to create innovative prototypes that demonstrate artful coding and design skills while also articulating clear business use cases – all focused on driving the next generation of commerce applications.

The Tel Aviv event will feature an esteemed panel of judges who will decide on the winning team based on their innovation’s impact, design, creativity, simplicity and usage of MasterCard’s APIs. The winning team from Tel Aviv will then join other winning regional teams to participate in the Grand Finale Masters of Code Hackathon in Silicon Valley. While in California, all winning regional teams will also be awarded a MasterCard Priceless® Experience – Northern California to take place in Napa Valley and San Francisco. The winning team will be recognized as the first Masters of Code Champions and given their Masters of Code Jackets, $100,000 and many other perks.

“We are delighted that Tel Aviv is part of our global hackathon series,” said Andras Hemberger, country manager for MasterCard Israel. “Israel has a thriving culture of start-ups, especially in the financial technology area, so it’s the ideal location to tap into exciting new ideas. The event also aligns with MasterCard’s focus on innovating across all areas of our business, as we meet the changing needs of business and consumers”.