Akana Partners With Barclays for the Rise Hackathon 2016

1,000 Developers in Manchester and Mumbai to Showcase Solutions to Top Bank Decision Makers

LONDON, September 20, 2016 – Akana, a leading provider of API Management, API security, and Microservices solutions, announced today that it will be joining Barclays Bank to support its upcoming hackathon at Rise in Manchester, UK and Mumbai, India on September 24 and 25, 2016. The hackathon, which will involve an estimated 500 teams and over 1,000 internal and external developers simultaneously between the two global hubs, is intended to give startups and FinTech ventures the opportunity to showcase their innovations to top decision makers at the bank. Akana is the API Management Platform of choice for the event, making APIs available externally through the Barclays Developer Network (BDN).

"This is an ambitious hackathon," said Roberto Medrano, Executive VP of Akana. "We're pleased to be once again, collaborating closely with Barclays to support this event."

The Rise Hackathon, titled "Rise: Episode II, The Bank Awakens", offers consumer banking, corporate banking, and payments tracks to surface innovation across a broad area of Fintech challenges.

The two-day hackathon, will allow Barclays - the transatlantic consumer, corporate and investment bank to see first-hand new, innovative solutions from new developers and ventures. There are 20+ other Barclays partners supporting the hackathon including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Twitter, Salesforce, IBM, Microsoft and Twillio. External developers will own any Intellectual Property (IP) they create at the hackathon.

Given the importance of APIs to FinTech solutions at Barclays, the bank is using Akana to host relevant Barclays APIs on its platform for the hackathon. Participating developers will use the Akana Platform to manage the consumption of Barclays APIs by their apps. Akana team members will be available in Manchester to coach app developers in API management and help troubleshoot any potential issues. The growth and opportunities of API consumption across financial services will help organisations like Barclays to create a more integrated service experience for customers across banking channels.

The Akana Platform provides an end-to-end API Management solution for designing, implementing, securing, managing, monitoring, and publishing APIs. It is available as a SaaS platform, on-premises, and as a hybrid deployment. Recently Akana was recognized as most promising banking technology solution provider and the Cloud Platform Innovation winner.

About the Barclays Accelerator/Rise

The Barclays Accelerator is one of several innovation initiatives delivered through Barclays' flagship program for connecting startups and corporations, Rise. Where product innovations and industry developments were once born of corporations and institutions, many are now being created by entrepreneurial individuals around the world who are working with increased speed to disrupt the business models of the past. In order to work with these entrepreneurs in a mutually beneficial way, Barclays established Rise. By combining the agility and disruption of startups with the expertise and scale of Barclays, Rise achieves a unique synthesis of speed and security, youth and wisdom, ideas and knowledge. Find out more at thinkrise.com.