The Attijariwafa bank group has made innovation a major lever to take up the numerous challenges and new constraints of its environment and has thus put it at the heart of its strategic plan. To do so, it has adopted an open innovation approach in co-construction with the ecosystem in order to bring more and more value to its customers, to anchor the innovation culture internally and to take part in the dynamization of African start-ups and the promotion of entrepreneurship.

Attijariwafa bank group launched in 2017 its open innovation program "Smart Up" whose highlight was the organization in May 2017 in partnership with LaStartupFactory, of the 1st International Fintech hackathon simultaneously in 5 major cities: Abidjan, Casablanca, Dakar, Paris & Tunis. The objective was to identify projects that could contribute to its digital transformation to reinvent the bank of tomorrow. 

Out of more than 420 internal and 1,025 external participants who applied, the jury selected 323 participants. For 48 hours non-stop, these young talents from various backgrounds worked to develop innovative solutions in response to the proposed theme "Know your customer, know you banker, know your colleague".

Smart Up figures : 

05 COUNTRIES

1,530 APPLICATIONS

323 PARTICIPANTS

211 IDEAS

20 TEAMS AWARDED LOCALLY

02 WINNERS

The Hackathon has been a great success both internally, with the mobilization of Attijariwafa Bank Group employees, and externally, with the large number of applications received. 

After the local competitions of the Attijariwafa Bank Group's International Hackathon, which were fiercely contested simultaneously in 5 countries, the 20 teams that won locally competed on May 31 before an international jury to qualify for the next stage of the Smart Up program. 

The international jury had a hard time dividing the 20 teams, as the projects presented by the participants from the 5 countries were of such high quality.  Boubker Jai, CEO of Attijariwafa bank said he was impressed by the various presentations made to the jury and was keen to congratulate all the teams for their performance, their creativity and the excellent spirit that has marked the work of the hackathon.

The jury finally selected 8 teams representing the 5 countries in the running. They qualified for the second round of the "Smart Up" international open innovation program, which consists of five weeks of training and coaching to develop their prototypes. They were then invited to present their solutions at a final event, the "Demo Day" in Casablanca. 

The eight local award-winning teams are : Atti. AI (Tunis); E-Cover (Dakar); E-Thik (Abidjan); M@ssroufy (Casablanca); MyHomeBank (Paris); NAMLA (Tunis); Tawassol (Casablanca); Wafa Bot (Casablanca).

This program took place in 4 stages and rewarded 3 projects out of the 8 finalists, each representing the 5 countries where Attijariwafa bank is established through its subsidiaries, namely in Morocco, Tunisia, France, Ivory Coast and Senegal.  The finalists presented their solutions in front of a jury composed of the Group's executives, 2 lucky winners were selected to continue the SmartUp adventure:

Paris - "Myhomebank".

It offers the African diaspora in Europe a solution allowing them to consolidate their accounts in European banks and subsidiaries of the Attijariwafa bank group in multiple currencies with the possibility to categorize their operations. It also allows them to carry out a set of operations from their accounts domiciled in their country of origin in all fluidity.

Tunis - "Namla

Namla is a mobile application that allows Attijariwafa bank's customers to control their expenses and achieve their goals simply and quickly.  Namla provides automatic and personalized support in controlling expenses, achieving savings goals and the realization of projects in the short, medium and long term.

The application allows the user to :

• follow the movements on their bank accounts via indicators and alerts.
• categorize his expenses automatically have a personalized support to achieve his savings goals.
• have access to offers of goods and personalized services proposed by partner companies to make their savings projects a reality.

These 2 winners have received a promise of purchase order from Attijariwafa bank in order to finalize the development of their solutions. They also reached the grail: the Super Prize, which consisted of a two-week immersion in Silicon Valley in the United States within one of the best accelerator devices in the world.  The jury also had a crush on a third winner:

Abidjan - E-check 

Team Ethik for its E-Check project, an innovative solution to confirm checks in a totally digital way.

It was a very productive 10 days of visiting incredible companies and connecting with very inspiring and hard working people. The AttijariWafa Bank teams and Smart Up winners were able to experience the Silicon Valley startup scene with a visit to Google, meet with Stanford University professors specializing in business innovation, and finally see the incredible work that Demo Africa has developed.

Al MADA (one of the largest private equity funds operating on the African scene) has strengthened 3 startups for their growth.