InterTapp

Inspiration

Let's face it. There's an endless amount of payment options out there; Apple Pay, Android Pay, you name it. However, none of them really support fast phone to phone payment transfers. In today's age, even children have access to phones. Providing a medium for paying others through the "tapping" of phones minimizes the hassle of the end user, allowing them to instantly fulfill transactions into banks in seconds.

What it does

The app allows users all across Canada to tap each other to request a sum of money through Interac eTransfer.

There are many use cases for this app.

Let's say you're out with your buddies for a drink and you want to split the bill. No longer will you have to to scrape through bills and coins to even out the bill. Instead, just tap your friend the amount of money they owe and you will receive it in seconds, with minimal effort.

Suppose you are a student that had just started a lemonade stand. Unfortunately, you don't have access to a POS system for charging funds. This is where InterTapp comes in. Just tap your customers for the price of your goods and you will receive

The possibilities are unlimited for users around the world of all ages.

How we built it

We created an Android app utilizing Near Field Communications (NFC) and the Interac eTransfer API. Once a user taps another phone, it sends relevant identity information over NFC to the other phone. It then requests the eTransfer API (with Android Volley) with whom to send money to and the amount requested. The recipient of the request then has an automatic prompt to confirm the transaction.

Our landing page is hosted on Microsoft Azure's cloud platform.

Challenges we ran into

None of us really have experience in mobile app development, so it was a slow phase of getting multiple things to work and fixing bugs. Since we were too focused on our project, we even missed out on a free Google Home Mini.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We managed to complete the full functionality of our original idea without losing our sanity (we think?). In the end, we were proud of our final product.

What we learned

We dipped our feet in the world of Android development. We found it to have a high learning curve, but in the end, we finally managed to complete our project.

What's next for InterTapp

As of now, our user interface is a bit lacking since none of us really have a background in design. An improvement in our UI/UX would definitely be beneficial for users. Our current implementation still has one small inconvenience - the final confirmation step. We hope that in the future, updates to the API will allow us to negate the final step to truly allow for a complete seamless payment experience.