DevCongress in partnership with MPower Payments and SMSGH is hosting Ghana’s first ever E-Commerce Hackathon, which would gather software programmers to build services that solve everyday problems.

The maiden event dubbed ‘DevCongress MPower Hackathon’, is slated for Saturday, October 5, 2013 from 08:00am to 10:00pm at the iSpace Foundation, Osu Ako Adjei.

Chief Solutions Architect at SMSGH, Kwadwo Seinti told Adombusiness, Hackathon is an opportunity for business owners, entrepreneurs, IT managers, sales managers, customer care managers and finance managers to register their website programmers to join other app developers in learning how to accept mobile and electronic payments online.

According to him, the gathering would also provide the opportunity for the website managers of various businesses to be introduced to the MPower Payment platform, which is Ghana’s most comprehensive payment platform that integrates all e-payment services such as Visa Cards and Mobile Money.

Seinti recalled, for instance, that paying for adverts on Myjoyonline is still manual and cumbersome, but that could also be made electronic and be integrated with the MPower Payment platform to enable Myjoyonline clients place ads and pay directly online.

He is therefore urging businesses to “take advantage of this perfect opportunity to turn your business into a thriving online business where customers can buy, and actually pay for your goods and services online.”

“Free registration for the e-commerce hackathon is available on www.EgoTickets.com,” Seinti said. “This event will be powered by programming interfaces from Ghana’s only real online payment service, www.MPower.com.gh and SMSGH.com.”

Meanwhile, electronic transactions on MPower Payment platform has shot up from 4,000 in July to about 13,000 currently, and financial value of those transactions has also shot up from about GHC120,000 to more than a million Ghana cedis now.

The main transactions used to be the purchase of mobile phone airtime, but now ticket purchase, particularly for Roverman Production plays and other events by National Theatre are also on the increase.   

Ghana| Adombusiness | Samuel Nii Narku Dowuona