Millennials Develop an App to Help out Those Who Are in Debt

11/06/2017 - 13h53

Are you unable to stop making purchases with your credit card despite already being in debt? Then maybe a robotic financial assistant in the form of an app may one day be the solution.

A project called "Kitle", which won a non-stop programming marathon that lasted 36 hours - a so-called "hackathon" that was promoted in October by company Intervalor, which is specialized in debt collection services.

The app was designed by three young contestants: Guilherme Furlan, 22, Mariana Lourenço, 23, and Nayana de Abreu, 25.

Mariana and Guilherme already knew each other before the event - they both work at the Eldorado Institute in Campinas (São Paulo), which carries out technological development projects for other companies.

She's a program designer, while he's a developer. They brought a sketch of the project along with them in their heads and teamed up with Nayana, who is also a developer, during the event.

Mariana said that the idea behind the project - a prototype was arrived at by the time the marathon came to an end - is that consumers can supply the app with information regarding their account balance, wage and debt. The layout is similar to that of a chat app.

If consumers want to make a purchase, but aren't sure if they should, then they can feed the app with information on the item they wish to buy, the method of payment and the number of installments.

Through artificial intelligence, the app will be able to ask questions concerning the purchase and give consumers advice.

For the time being the app is not available for consumers in its integrity. What is available is an MVP (or "minimum viable product"): a version of the app containing all the basic operations, developed with the intent of getting feedback in order to further improve the program.

Mariana said that she expects to develop partnerships with financial institutions in order to simplify the process of loading consumer data onto the app, thus making it more practical to handle.

Translated by THOMAS MATHEWSON

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