Allowance | Devpost

Inspiration

We wanted to enable parents to give their children money without them needing cash, cards, or a bank account, while also limiting where and when they could spend their money. Additionally, there would be a ledger of when, where, and what was purchased. With these ideas combined, the original idea would be analogous to giving a 'monitored' allowance.

How it works

We created a webapp that allows a user to see their current available money based on location and time, send other users money, see money they have sent/received, past spending history, etc ... In the mobile version of the webapp, we allow the user to access their money via a native Android app that uses NFC to execute a payment with a store (this is simulated by using two android phones). User and transaction database requests are handled by a cloud server setup in parse. By doing this, users' bank account information is never needed on their local machine. Additionally, a user who 'receives' money from another user never has the money transferred into their account; when a transaction is made between a store and receiver, the sender's bank account is charged. With this setup, anyone may receive money, regardless of whether or not they are a Capital One customer, have a credit card, etc ...

Challenges I ran into

Challenges we ran into were lack of experience in Android. We overcame this by making a webapp for the main UX/UI component.

Parse's learning curve was aggravating at times because of their sometimes great and other times spotty

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are proud of having created a truly functional application and website interface. We hit many of our stretch goals for this project.

What's next for Allowance

While the inspiration for Allowance was a great start, it was quite shortsighted. Its applications can extend to:

Corporate oversight of corporate accounts given to employees: Location, time, and store restrictions (as well as a ledger of all expenses) can allow for companies to restrict the use of their accounts used at the discretion of their employees. Additionally, this will make creating expense reports an autonomous task!
Stores can offer customers smart coupons that have dynamic contracts such as location and times it may be available. this could easily lead to a venue for more targeted advertising and a customized experience for