Accoun.tech

Inspiration

Bersam is a new bank account user. What does this mean? Well, depending on his financial transactions in the next few months, he can be either deemed a liability, or a safe user. Unfortunately, Bersam then spends the next month impulsively buying iPads with reckless abandon, and forgets to pay off his credit card balance on time. Slowly, enormous fees pile up and weeks later, tears flow out of his financially illiterate eyes as he is left in shambles, his credit score ruined.

Though this story might have given you a small laugh, the situation is far too familiar to many around the world. Banking systems are one of the most powerful financial institutions we have, letting us deposit money in a safe, secure, location. However, just because the money is no longer physically on someone doesn't mean that they are any less responsible for handling their spending and saving. For most people, their path to bad financial habits can be traced back to a simple lack of financial literacy and monitoring. By offering each person a 1 on 1 reactive system to their transactions, we can give banks financially savvy clients that make informed decisions.

What it does

Our product aims to deliver a reactive feedback system for outlier transactions. When clients make financial decisions that set off flags, such as an enormous purchase going beyond what they spent the last month, they will be immediately alerted of not only the purchase itself, but also the potential ramifications of the purchase on them.

Current bank feedback usually coms in the form of monthly statements a user gets in their email, something that arrives long after a potentially damaging purchase has been made. The user often does not know the impacts of their actions until the damage has already been done. By making our system reactive, users will receive instant feedback and can prevent making huge spending mistakes that could hurt their financial profile.

Additionally, our AI assitant, AccounTech, is on standby. The user can open conversations about their transaction history, which the AI has access to. AccounTech then answers open ended questions about financials, helping users meet their goals.

How we built it

Accoun.Tech has a front-end side, consisting of an app made in React Native that serves as the reactive tool that responds to every transaction with feedback or an AI message. Additionally, we developed a mock simulation of a banking website using React.js to showcase how the AI would connect with a banking service.

The backend side of our product is an API server developed with Express.js, hosted on a virtual machine on Google Cloud. From there, we make REST API calls to the server from our product to access transactions and the AI.

Challenges we ran into

To say there were obstacles during our day of development would be an understatement. I fact, as I currently type this at 6:29 in the morning, we scramble to debug a IP Port error with our Google Cloud server. Fun times!

REST API requests were a huge challenge. While they were working locally, the requests began failing once we hosted to a Google Cloud server. We had to figure out how to listen with a port and IP, and set up CORS. After that, our front end would make requests to get data from the server.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that Google Cloud was figured out, and how to transfer our files onto there and run detached screens. Additionally the satisfaction we got when the API calls began successfully communicating with each other across our laptops could not be measured.

Building an entire bank simulation in mere hours was also something we are proud of, as is making an app to connect with said simulation. Finally, the AI component was challenging to implement, but it allowed for amazing open ended responses to clients.

What we learned

Express.js:

We learned how to build web applications and APIs quickly and efficiently using Express.js, learning the importance of middleware for routing and handling HTTP requests

Google Cloud:

We gained knowledge of cloud computing services and how to deploy, scale, and manage applications on Google Cloud Platform

React:

We understood the virtual DOM and how it optimizes rendering in web applications, in addition to using Tailwind CSS for styling.

React Native:

We developed our app using React Native!

Rest API:

We grasped the concepts of RESTful web services and learned about HTTP methods, status codes, and request/response formats in RESTful architecture