Interac-tions with Google Assistant

Inspiration

“It’s not about ideas, it’s about making ideas happen” - Scott Belsky. When our team first started searching for an idea. However, making a futuristic combination of Google’s Dialogflow and Interac seemed like a hard feat to accomplish. However, Belsky’s approach towards life, motivated us to fulfill this idea in less than 36 hours.

What it does

Our application has converted the widely used Interac transfer and given it a futuristic approach with the google assistant. Now you can tell Google how much money you want to request from whom, and google will ask Interac to place the request for you. What’s more? You can even ask Google to fetch a log of all the people who have borrowed money from you and keep a record of the people whom you have sent money too.

How we built it

We have used multiple platforms and API’s and integrated them together. Using Node.js, we deployed the cloud functions for the firebase database. The firebase database contains the information about all the users. This information is parsed and stored in the database using the Interac API as well as well as previous information of the user in the databse. We have also provided an extra layer of security to prevent unauthorized requests for payments. Please visit our booth and it will be our pleasure to give you a demo!

Challenges we ran into

We were all learning a new technology so getting started and getting familiar with it was especially challenging. We hit numerous roadblocks attempting to properly set up the project with Firebase and Webhooks. Moreover, learning to with the Interac API and then integrating that with Google actions so that timely payments are made, was one of the biggest challenges.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It works! Moreover, all of us learnt more than we could have in the whole semester.

What we learned

Learned new technologies (DialogFlow, Firebase, HTTPS Rest, etc.) and working 36 hours straight, we learned making any thing is possible, provided your team is willing to do whatever it takes.

What's next for Interac with Google Assistant

Interac had 5,428 million transactions in 2016 [http://www.interac.ca/en/interac-debit-tab.html] . Integrating with Google Assistant will greatly simplify these payments and in turn increase the transactions performed per year on Interac. Thus, resulting in a better business performance. To move Interac with Google Assistant into production, we would need to set up an OAuth server to allow for Google Account linking. This would allow for the action to send Interac payment requests to anyone on their contacts list. We would also like to work further with the Interac API once it’s made available to the public. We are eager to try the send function of the Interac API once its launched and use that to provide additional features to the app.

Built With

• dialogflow
• firebase
• javascript
• node.js