GreenPay

Scan, earn points, and gain rewards for being sustainable and for reducing your carbon footprint.

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Inspiration

The earth is heating up everyday, and each one of us contributed to the carbon footprint. But what if we had incentive to make better choices in our daily lives, which would reduce the carbon footprint?

What it does

We built a mobile application which enables users to scan receipts and be rewarded in virtual points for every product that is better for Mother Earth. The user can then redeem those points for real money in the form of an Amazon gift card, or donate the money to charity.

How we built it

The Front-End was built using the React Native framework and many corresponding libraries. The Backend was built using Flask, Firebase, and hosted on Google Cloud Platform. We also used AWS Textract with Lambda functions to extract text out of receipts in real time.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge we ran into was setting up the lamda function and getting the lamda function to return data back to the mobile app. We had to jump through many hoops, but ultimately the solution turned out to be dumb simple.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to build a fully working POC within 36 hours. The mobile app processes receipts in real time, and we are able to get live output within a few seconds. We are also able to readily redeem virtual points for real money. The app is simple and functional, and we made it from scratch, which is something we are proud of.

What we learned

We learned how to create business plans based on ideas, learned to use text extraction tools like AWS Textract, and some libraries in React Native.

What's next for GreenPay

GreenPay is an excellent idea which is very scalable and has the potential to be a business. Here are some of the most interesting things we brainstormed: -

  1. GreenPay can be used for tracking user expenses by the month / week helping users stay within budget
  2. The data analysis opportunities with receipt is big. We can easily make shopping patterns for businesses, encourage the purchase of local purchasing to reduce the carbon footprint, and help smaller businesses with consumer management.
  3. GreenPay would be used to encourage sustainable products and green energy, helping Mother Earth.
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