Their goal was to develop the best use of blockchain technology to handle “smart contracts” - computer protocols that enforce or facilitate contracts.

Foo-Tomatons, a team from Birmingham, Ala., was named the competition winner for developing a solution that leveraged blockchain techniques with four different types of smart contracts. Judges were impressed by the team’s use of many open-source and other frameworks to facilitate implementation of their solution, and that their innovation has immediate practicality. Remarkably, Foo-Tomatons also won the competition in 2014.

“Change in the financial industry is happening at an ever faster pace. To keep up, everyone must find smarter, more efficient ways to deliver more to clients and customers,” said Troy Bradley, chief technology officer, FIS. “That means using technology and innovation to develop smarter, faster, more efficient ways of empowering the financial world. This year’s Hackathon pushed participants to do exactly that.”

Sponsored by Intel Corporation and Microsoft, FIS Hackathon 2016 was judged by IT and security experts from Intel and Microsoft, as well as ANZ Singapore, Bangkok Bank, eftpos, Hewlett Packard and Standard Chartered Bank.

“It was incredibly exciting to see how intensely these teams worked to complete their challenges,” said Dejan Kusalovic, marketing director, Intel Corporation. “Powered by the will to create the future of financial technology - and often a lot of pizza - the commitment they showed to developing their individual ideas was remarkable. Congratulations to everyone who took part!”

Nearly 240 teams, involving over 1,000 IT experts from more than 20 different countries, competed in FIS Hackathon 2016, which took place over three rounds of competition between June and September. Teams were challenged to demonstrate a product or service for FIS that used blockchain technology to perform a function of settlement, trading clearing or payment against delivery.