College Plan, a platform tailored to aid young people better control their spending by integrating an MTN Mobile Money account into an innovative app, has made it to the grand finale of the MoMo Developer Hackathon Challenge 2019.

The platform, developed by University of Buea students Takwi Gisele and Fonkam Loïc, stood out from over 200 competitors in the initial competition in October 2019.

Now the techies will participate in the finals to take place in Sweden, against the national winners of the same competition from Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Uganda and Zambia.

The MoMo Developer Hackathon Challenge is a joint initiative by the MTN Group and Ericsson, where developers and entrepreneurs are invited to use their expertise to propose initiatives that leverage Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to improve the lives of MTN Mobile Money (MoMo) users.

College Plan bagged the first place prize of US$2,500, Teledocta was second and received US$2,000, and LightPay secured third position with US$1,500 cash prize.

Teledocta is a telemedicine application which links to-and enables remote consultations, among other medical services.

LightPay helps customers pay for purchases quickly using MTN Mobile Money. It also facilitates real-time communication with friends or family if the user runs out of money, and for brands to communicate offers to customers.

Patrick Attoungbre, Chief Marketing Officer of MTN Cameroon, lauded the contribution of the techies to help acceleration financial inclusion and the digitisation of payments.

The winners will benefit from an all-expenses-paid stay at the Ericsson Innovation Laboratory in Sweden.

According to Marie-Rose Daya, President of the jury, which also comprised of experts from MTN Cameroon, Ericsson and ActiveSpaces, the young people who entered the competition are full of passion and faith in their applications and it is convincing that they will change the world.

Describing them as "the next digital giants," Daya said "the impact of such projects for Fintech is huge and I have no doubt that they will have a bold effect on our ecosystem."