Interest Rate Watcher

Interest rates set by central banks play an important role in an economy. With Courier, we help notify users of interest rates changes, which is helpful for those with obligations like mortgages.

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Inspiration

I never heard of Courier up until I took part in a different hackathon and saw this and thought I would join. I took time to understand what Courier offers and I was really impressed with the detailed nature of the documentation, the availability of Courier APIs in a wide variety of languages as well as its beautiful user interface (I love the way the colour pink is used - very memorable!). It didn't take long for me to get the gist of what Courier offers, which is a way to notify people through a number of different channels. As a programmer who works in PHP, the traditional mechanism by which we email users is using the appropriately named mail() function. However, Courier simplifies this process considerably, and I can see this being widely adopted.

As someone from an economics background, I was therefore inspired to build a project for this hackathon that runs along economic lines. Economics has been in the news quite extensively over recent months, particularly in relation to the inflation rate as well as the interest rate. I created this script so that people could be readily informed of interest rate changes of central banks, which falls under fintech.

What it does

The interest rate set by a central bank is perhaps one of the most important economic policies in a given country. It governs what your credit card charges, the balance of your student loans (if you have any), the amount that is paid for a mortgage, the cost to finance a car, and much more. Despite this, people do not frequently keep up to date with the news, and therefore, are not readily informed about what the current interest rate is that is set by their central bank. This can lead to lack of preparedness when it comes to personal finances. Examples of central banks include the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England as well as the European Central Bank (ECB). What the Interest Rate Watcher does is that it monitors the interest rate of the central bank of the country the person resides in. When the rate is raised, it informs the end user; similarly, when the rate is lowered, it also informs the end user. It does this via two channels: email and SMS. It is hoped that by informing the end user of the interest rate a central bank currently sets, people can better prepare for the future.

How the Interest Rate Watcher was built and how it works

The Interest Rate Watcher is built using both PHP, mySQL and some JavaScript. The script works by scraping publicly available information of interest rates set by central banks across the world. It then notes this in a database. It then emails the end user periodically if an interest rate change has been made.

Challenges that I ran into

The hackathon was only 24 hours long.

Accomplishments I am proud of

I am proud I familiarised myself with Composer and Guzzle, which I am sure will be beneficial in other software development contexts.

What we learned

Time management was an important skill I learned.

What's next for Interest Rate Watcher

The script is designed in such a way that financial institutions and central banks can readily include this script in their website if they so wish. If there is sufficient interest in the Interest Rate Watcher, it will be expanded to include other important economic indices. It is also possible the Interest Rate Watcher will be incorporated into a mobile app, which would necessitate the use of Java and XML.

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