SwiftRate

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  Greeting message

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  Rate alert, daily reminder, getting quotes

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  Month average

Inspiration

The problem

When we have needs to exchange for foreign currencies, we often times obsessively check exchange rates to make sure we can get the best rate possible. Yes, you can set up foreign exchange rate alerts through emails and mobile apps. But they take unproportional amount of effort and time to set up for such a simple task, especially for people who are not tech savvy. In adidition, it doesn't make much sense to download an app or set up email alerts when you only need to check foreign exchange rates for couple days per year.

What it does

A SMS service that automatically updates user when rates go above or below user's target rate and report exchange rate daily. As a bonus, you can access this service whether you have data or not.

How I built it

xe.com APIs + Express + Twilio + Love for simplicity .

Challenges I ran into

Keep the amount of instruction needed low in order to have simple user experience.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

The app has virtually no learning curve for most people.

What I learned

Even the seemingly very simple things might not be simple to some subset of the population and there are always things we can do to help them.

What's next for SwiftRate

Try to have foreign exchange sites to consider using SMS to simplify their user experiences.

Built With

• node.js
• twilio
• xe