PiggyBank

Inspiration

We were inspired by the microfinance movement and how the small interest-free loans provided helped groups of people who did not have the collateral to obtain conventional loans. Young adults in the United States also may not have the collateral and credit history to secure conventional loans, or be able to rely on family members to do so, but that should not prevent them from pursuing their business ideas or reaching project goals.

What it does

This app asks the user for their login information upon starting. If they don't have an account, it lets them create one using their name, email, password, age, phone number, and a goal (the reason they are asking for money). Then, it lets them sign in the app, and gives them four options: Request Loan, Chat with Bot, Profile, and Connections. In Request Loan, they can request loans to supprot their projets or business ideas. The Chat with Bot feature provides financial guidance and answers users questions. In Profile, the user can view their personal details, including their rating, phone number, goals, and a unique connection code. In connections, users can connect with others, and request loans from them.

How we built it

We coded the backend in Java (Mihika and Tabiya) using VSCode LiveShare. Andrew created the chatbot. Ethan worked on the GUI, with the help of Mihika.

Challenges we ran into

We had to convert all our Java code into Flutter. Downloading Flutter took some time and we (Ethan and Mihika) ran into a few issues. We had to create a few different copies of our repo at one point as we had to overwrite our work to start to convert files into Flutter but didn't want to lose the Java code.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Rewriting a great quantity of code in Flutter, which we were all new to. We had to figure it out quickly. The flutter setup was also difficult, but we are glad we were able to get it done.