Circle

Women are less likely to apply for bank accounts due to distrust in sharing their information online. Circle allows women to save money with their friends, creating a safer space to put their money.

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Inspiration

Various studies have shown that a gender gap exists in fintech. From women being less likely to open banking and investment accounts to under representation in the industry, there exists an issue that needs to be addressed. With increasing measures taken to promote equality of everyone around the world, the fintech industry is also contributing their own solutions to the matter.

The of the contributing factors to the gender gap is that women are less comfortable with sharing personal information online (a fast growing banking method). Our project focuses on addressing this factor.

What it does

Circle is a web app that allows users to create a savings account with a group of people. Users can choose to make yearly/quarterly/monthly contributions to the pool of money and withdraw money at the appropriate time should it be needed. Women can find comfort by saving their money in the same account as loved ones (family, friends, neighbors, etc.). Everyone can create a savings group and invite people they trust to save with them. Be it an account for personal long-term savings or for achieving a goal such as a group vacation with friends, doing it with other people is also more enjoyable and satisfying.

How we built it

The UI for Circle is designed on Figma. It is then transformed into a real web app using React.

Challenges

One of the larger challenges we faced was learning React. Most of the team had little prior experience with React so the coding process took away precious time. Another challenge was taking on a project that may have been too ambitious to complete in 2-3 days.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Besides the slow progress, we were able to complete a few components of our web app and learned a lot through the process. Lessons such as how to merge using git and connecting an Express backend with React frontend.

What's next for Circle

If completed and polished for production, Circle will be a big inspiration for future projects that will help reduce the gender gap in fintech. Circle will also help women around the world practice good financial habits by keeping each other in check. In terms of development, we need to complete a few more pages in the frontend of the application and build a backend for registration and log in.

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