The Eight-Month Lead-up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The June 2019 weekend sat at the end of an event series that KG Labs had been running with the Interbank Processing Center (\u041c\u041f\u0426, the operator of the Elcart national payment system) and Ololohaus from October 2018 onward. The series was unusual in Bishkek programming because each event named a specific operational question rather than a general topic. The first, in October 2018, asked what was actually slowing down the use of FinTech inside Kyrgyz banks and merchants. The second tackled the hard policy question of cashless payments and digital economy. By February 21, 2019, KG Labs and Elcart were running a full Case Battle in Ololohaus on QR payments \u2014 a structured competition where teams worked through real-world QR rollout scenarios in front of a panel from the National Bank, the Ministry of Economy, and the commercial banking sector. A parallel event ran in Osh on the development of e-wallets in Kyrgyzstan. On April 17, 2019, the series produced a Case Battle on remote identification in the financial sector, the regulatory question that was at that point the single biggest blocker for digital onboarding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time the hackathon launched its three pre-event meetups in May\u2013early June 2019 \u2014 the first on IT solutions in e-commerce, the second on IT platforms in logistics, the third a master class on pitching \u2014 KG Labs already had the room. Banks knew which side of which regulation was the issue. Merchants knew which infrastructure was missing. The hackathon’s role was to put developers and product designers in front of those known problems with 54 hours and four mentors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Hackathon Weekend: 14\u201316 June 2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Friday opened in the Library at 18:00 with registration, then a structured opening ceremony at 19:00 \u2014 team introductions, organizer and mentor greetings, programme overview, and at 20:00 the pitching of ideas to the room. By 21:00 the buses were moving to Ololohaus Erkindik, where the teams worked overnight. Saturday alternated between checkpoints at Ololohaus (9:00, 15:00, 20:30) and two open public events back at the Library: a panel discussion at 13:30 on «How to earn in e-commerce» with experience from international platforms (Amazon, Wildberries), and a guest lecture at 18:00 on «How to become a successful IT startup and get investments.» On Sunday morning the teams returned to a fourth checkpoint at Ololohaus, then worked through the afternoon. A panel at 17:00 in the Library covered cross-border and international trade technologies. The prototype deadline was 16:30 Sunday. Final presentations ran 19:00\u201321:00, awards 21:00\u201322:00.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The mentor bench was deliberately built for the FinTech and e-commerce question rather than for general startup advice. Daniil Vartanov, CTO of the UK-based Veeqo (an e-commerce automation platform for larger sellers), had been working on startup implementations since 2008 and had been giving public lectures on cryptocurrencies and blockchain since 2014. Artem Bubkin came from Business & Finance Consulting, with deep experience in banking automation, fraud management, and project implementation across Central Asia. Rinat Abdrasilov \u2014 an independent director on the KG Labs board \u2014 brought strategy experience from Lloyds Banking Group: four years leading a forum on new retail products, four more orchestrating innovation in business banking, alongside more than twenty years internationally on product portfolios, business design, and bank strategy. Peter Fabian, a Stanford MBA who had served as bank CEO in Tajikistan after four years in Silicon Valley, completed the panel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What the Final Seven Teams Built<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The seven finalist projects clustered around two questions: how to extend credit to people who do not look like classical bank customers, and how to fix the broken information layer between farmers, e-commerce platforms, and last-mile delivery. The clustering was not coincidental \u2014 it was where the FinTech series had been pointing for nine months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- RofDev \u2014 AgroSale (1st place, 130,000 KGS)<\/strong>. Almost-functional website by the time of presentation: farmers list agricultural products and submit credit applications to commercial banks; statistics on agricultural production are published alongside. The team had integrated the Elcart payment system into the build during the weekend.<\/li>\n
- \u0422\u043e\u0441\u0442\u044b \u2014 Toast Pay (2nd place, 70,000 KGS)<\/strong>. Consumer installment credit for e-commerce: a customer chooses a product on any participating online shop, sets the credit terms they want, and the system selects a bank willing to issue at those terms. The application is filed entirely online.<\/li>\n
- \u041d\u043e\u0432\u0430\u0442\u043e\u0440 \u2014 \u0410\u0447\u044b\u043a \u041a\u0430\u0437\u044b\u043d\u0430<\/strong>. Consumer credit application processed in 7 minutes using social-media-based credit scoring. The customer connects social profiles to the application; the platform analyzes the data and returns a credit decision and rating, with funds disbursed directly to the customer’s account.<\/li>\n
- Loguno<\/strong>. Peer-to-peer delivery service. Online stores hand off delivery to job-seekers via the platform; new orders route automatically to the courier closest to the pickup point. Designed for stores struggling to staff in-house delivery.<\/li>\n
- \u0410\u0443\u043a\u0446\u0438\u043e\u043d \u2014 Farmer Booking<\/strong>. Pre-harvest commodity ordering. Farmers receive orders before planting, allowing them to plan production volumes against committed demand rather than guessing the market.<\/li>\n
- \u0427\u0438\u0442\u043e \u2014 \u042d\u043a\u043e \u0414\u044b\u0439\u043a\u0430\u043d<\/strong>. Farmer-to-buyer marketplace with integrated payment, contract execution, and logistics tracking and coordination.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
The eight-member jury \u2014 international mentors plus representatives from the High-Tech Park, KG Labs, and NSP Elcart \u2014 did not make their selection by simple vote. Abdrasilov described the process explicitly: each team was assessed against four criteria \u2014 customer base, scalability, monetization, design and presentation quality \u2014 with the jury working through a comparative discussion rather than aggregating scores blind. AgroSale won because it was, in effect, already shippable: a near-working product with a real payment integration on a real Kyrgyz commodity flow. Toast Pay won second because the financing logic \u2014 letting the user define the terms first and matching a bank to the user, not the other way round \u2014 flipped the standard model in a way the panel found commercially defensible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why GIZ and Elcart, Together<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The funding pairing \u2014 GIZ’s Central Asia trade facilitation programme on one side, Elcart through \u041c\u041f\u0426 on the other \u2014 explains a lot about what the hackathon was actually for. GIZ’s interest sat in cross-border e-commerce: removing friction in the trade flows between Kyrgyzstan and its neighbors. Elcart’s interest sat in domestic payment infrastructure: the QR rails, e-wallets, and remote identification that the Case Battles earlier in the year had mapped. The hackathon was the point where those two interests overlapped \u2014 where a credit-issuance flow on a domestic farmer-to-buyer platform could plug into international payment standards on the way out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The state partner list reflected that overlap. The Ministry of Economy, the National Bank, the State Committee on Information Technology and Communications, and the State Service of Intellectual Property and Innovation all had standing interests in the same questions, and the GKITiS «Digital CASA \u2013 KR» project provided the information-support backbone. The National Payment System «Elcart» was both co-funder and prize-payer; the prize money was not symbolic outside funding but national-payment-system money paid into integrations on the national payment system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What Happened After<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The week after, KG Labs ran an awards ceremony for the volunteers and a structured feedback collection from participants and judges. Both videos \u2014 the full first day and the full final day \u2014 went up on the KG Labs YouTube channel. The hackathon’s design choices had a measurable effect on the events that followed: the multi-month structured pre-event series, the ticketing readiness, the choice to run sectoral panels in parallel with team work rather than sequentially, the prize structure tied directly to a payment-system integration \u2014 all became defaults for KG Labs hackathons in 2020 and 2021. They were also explicit corrections of what had not worked at the December 2016 Travel & Tourism Hackathon, the team’s first run at the format.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the policy side, the e-commerce law and strategy work that ran in parallel through 2019\u20132021 used the data and the case material from the hackathon and the FinTech series as the evidence base. Some of the same teams \u2014 and some of the same regulators in the room as judges \u2014 appeared in the working group on the e-commerce draft law that the Ministry of Economy convened later that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nEvent Details<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n\n \n
\n \nDetail<\/th>\n Information<\/th>\n <\/tr>\n <\/thead>\n \n Dates<\/td>\n Friday June 14 \u2014 Sunday June 16, 2019 (54 hours)<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Pre-event meetups (May\u2013early June 2019)<\/td>\n #1 IT solutions in e-commerce; #2 IT platforms in logistics; #3 Master class on pitching<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Wider series context (Oct 2018 \u2013 Apr 2019)<\/td>\n Stimulating use of FinTech (Oct 2018); Digital Economy and Cashless Payments (Oct 2018); Case Battle on QR payments with Elcart and Ololohaus (Feb 21, 2019); E-wallets discussion in Osh; Case Battle on Remote Identification in the Financial Sector (Apr 17, 2019)<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Venues<\/td>\n State Patent-Technical Library, Bishkek (opening, public panels, final pitches, awards); Ololohaus Erkindik (overnight team work, breakfasts\/lunches\/dinners, checkpoints)<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Lead organizer<\/td>\n KG Labs Public Foundation<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Funders \/ co-funders<\/td>\n GIZ «Trade Facilitation in Central Asia» programme (Deutsche Gesellschaft f\u00fcr Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH); ZAO Interbank Processing Center (\u041c\u041f\u0426) \u2014 National Payment System «Elcart»<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n State partners<\/td>\n Ministry of Economy of KR; National Bank of KR; State Committee on Information Technology and Communications (\u0413\u041a\u0418\u0422\u0438\u0421); State Service of Intellectual Property and Innovation<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Information support<\/td>\n \u0413\u041a\u0418\u0422\u0438\u0421 «Digital CASA \u2013 KR» project<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Applications \/ Selected \/ Teams \/ Finalists<\/td>\n 170+ applications \u2192 80 participants \u2192 12 teams Friday \u2192 7 finalists Sunday<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Mentors<\/td>\n Daniil Vartanov (CTO, Veeqo, UK); Artem Bubkin (Business & Finance Consulting); Rinat Abdrasilov (Senior Manager Strategy, Lloyds Banking Group; KG Labs board independent director); Peter Fabian (former bank CEO Tajikistan; Stanford MBA)<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Jury<\/td>\n Eight members; international mentors plus representatives from High-Tech Park of the Kyrgyz Republic, KG Labs, NSP «Elcart»<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n 1st place<\/td>\n RofDev \u2014 AgroSale<\/strong> (agricultural product orders + farmer credit applications + Elcart payment integration). Prize: 130,000 KGS<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n 2nd place<\/td>\n \u0422\u043e\u0441\u0442\u044b \u2014 Toast Pay<\/strong> (e-commerce installment credit, user-defined terms, bank-matching). Prize: 70,000 KGS<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Other finalists<\/td>\n \u041d\u043e\u0432\u0430\u0442\u043e\u0440 \u2014 \u0410\u0447\u044b\u043a \u041a\u0430\u0437\u044b\u043d\u0430 (7-minute consumer credit, social-media credit scoring); Loguno (peer-to-peer delivery for jobseekers); \u0410\u0443\u043a\u0446\u0438\u043e\u043d \u2014 Farmer Booking (pre-harvest orders); \u0427\u0438\u0442\u043e \u2014 \u042d\u043a\u043e \u0414\u044b\u0439\u043a\u0430\u043d (farmer marketplace + logistics)<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n <\/tbody>\n <\/table>\n Source: 2019 GIZ Fintech ecommerce hackathon archive (\u041f\u0440\u043e\u0433\u0440\u0430\u043c\u043c\u0430 \u0425\u0430\u043a\u0430\u0442\u043e\u043d\u0430 — Ecommerce and FinTech Hackathon — 11.06.2019.md, \u0438\u0442\u043e\u0433\u0438 \u0445\u0430\u043a\u0430\u0442\u043e\u043d\u0430.md, \u041f\u0440\u043e\u0435\u043a\u0442\u044b \u043a\u043e\u043c\u0430\u043d\u0434 \u0445\u0430\u043a\u0430\u0442\u043e\u043d\u0430.md, mentors bio.md, \u0413\u041a\u0418\u0422\u0438\u0421 \u0440\u0435\u043b\u0438\u0437.md). Twelve legacy posts on kglabs.org consolidated into this rewrite.<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" E-Commerce and FinTech Hackathon 2019: AgroSale, Toast Pay, and the Run-up That Made Them Possible By the time the 2019 E-Commerce and FinTech Hackathon opened on the evening of Friday, June 14, in the State Patent-Technical Library in central Bishkek, KG Labs had been preparing the room for nine months. 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- \u0422\u043e\u0441\u0442\u044b \u2014 Toast Pay (2nd place, 70,000 KGS)<\/strong>. Consumer installment credit for e-commerce: a customer chooses a product on any participating online shop, sets the credit terms they want, and the system selects a bank willing to issue at those terms. The application is filed entirely online.<\/li>\n