Voices

Winners named in financial mobile app contest

The U.S. Department of the Treasury, the D2D Fund and the Center for Financial Services Innovation announced the winners of the IdeaBank portion of the MyMoneyAppUp Challenge, which awards the best mobile app ideas and designs to facilitate smart financial choices via high quality products and services.

The winning submissions were chosen from the more than 300 ideas, sent in 140 characters or less, for next-generation financial-management mobile tools. The proposals came from industry leaders, academics and consumer advocates and were whittled down first by a public vote of more than 1,300 people, and then a panel of judges that selected winners from those finalists.

Those winners, who will claim cash prizes for their ideas, are:

Grand Prize, receiving $1,000

“I want an app that lets me enter purchases and rate/track how happy they do or don't make me over time, so I can adjust my spending accordingly.”

Collin O’Rourke, 26, Waukegan, Ill.

Runners-Up: Two winners, each receiving $500

“I want an app that locates people around you who are willing to trade away an item that you would have otherwise purchased, then facilitate the trade.”

Genki Kondo, 24, Bethesda, Maryland

“I want an app that calculates the return on investment for college, based on expected net cost of tuition at specific colleges and anticipated salary by major.”

Stephanie Halligan, 25, Arlington, Virginia

Honorable Mentions: Two winners, each receiving $250
“I want an app that shows real costs.  If I put $100 shoes on a credit card with 18% rate, what do they really cost me?  What would $100 do if invested instead?”

Emily Hummel, 43, Austin, Texas

“I want an app that will set guidelines for my expenditures in accordance to my yearly salary and will periodically inform me of my remaining spending capacity.”

Waqarul Islam, 16, Bronx, New York

Support for the prizes and administration of the challenge by D2D and CFSI comes from the Ford Foundation, Omidyar Network and the Citi Foundation. Winners that want to take their ideas to the next step and develop fully functional apps can enter the separate Financial Capability Development Competition, sponsored exclusively by D2D and CFSI. 

More information on the challenge and all the submitted ideas are available at IdeaBank.MyMoneyAppUp.Challenge.gov.

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