Vision Carbon by CityU Won Gold Medal with its Blockchain-based Carbon Trading Platform
HONG KONG SAR 29 May 2023 – Hosted by the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and supported by HSBC, the FinTech Olympiad (FTOL) 2023 competition convening 94 teams across 18 universities from cities in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) was concluded with an award ceremony on 27 May. In the final pitch round, 20 finalist teams pitched their financial technology-enabled business solutions to a panel of industry leaders. Vision Carbon, a team from the City University of Hong Kong won the Gold Medal and “The Best Cross-Border FinTech Solution” award with its blockchain-based project aimed to enhance the transparency, verifiability and traceability of carbon credit trading across the GBA. Vision Carbon’s solution proposed to ease carbon offsets for both businesses and individuals.
Speaking at the ceremony today, Dr Isabel Yan, Associate Professor, Department of Economics & Finance, CityU remarked, “City U takes pride in organising the fourth FinTech Olympiad. Through the programme, FTOL is aimed to help students from all disciplines equip themselves with FinTech savviness and build industry connections that can enhance their competitiveness and employability, from a career development perspective. We encourage the younger generation to get prepared for being the key driver of the auspicious FinTech trend.”
Ms. Charlotte Wong, Chief Information Officer, Hong Kong, HSBC said, “As a ‘super-connector’ between Hong Kong and the world, HSBC is committed to playing a vital role in pushing forward fintech development in Hong Kong. We are proud to support the Fintech Olympiad which enables our future generations to pave the way for their career development in fintech. It is great to see how well this year’s participants across the GBA apply innovative ideas to address real life social needs. They have won themselves an entry ticket to the global fintech arena. Congratulations to all the awardees.”
The FinTech Olympiad is a 10-month active learning programme, comprising of training, project-based competition and networking events aimed at equipping students and driving opportunities to fit their aspirations. Over 1,400 students from 20 tertiary institutions in the GBA applied to join the training sessions, a 230% increase from last year.
The competition was designed to encourage university students to work out solutions that can address social and economic problems encountered in our everyday life by applying their fintech knowledge and skills. 20 finalist teams were selected among 94 team entrants and were supported by mentors from a range of backgrounds. The finalist teams presented their solutions to a judging panel composed of industry leaders in a real-life business world setting. Their proposals were evaluated based on criteria including problem-solving, social impacts, innovation, thoughtfulness and leadership and communication.
The winning teams (see the list of awardees) will receive prize money and industry support from HSBC, internship opportunities from the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) and CityU HK Tech 300 funding possibilities to further develop their projects.
ASTRI and Hong Kong Digital Asset Society (HKDAS) are strategic partners of the FTOL, organising training workshops, meetup events and experts’ sharing sessions for participants.
List of Awardees of Fintech Olympiad 2023 Competition
| Award | Winning Team | Project | Representing |
| Gold Medal | Vision Carbon
(Team #20) |
A blockchain-based trading platform applying smart contract, NFT and GameFi to make the trading of Voluntary Carbon Credits more transparent, verifiable and traceable so as to enable businesses to access high-quality carbon credits. The solution also facilitates individuals to offset carbon footprint through tree planting investment. | CityU |
| Silver Medal | K-Quant Group
(Team #12) |
A platform delivering advanced and
Interpretable tools for everyday investors to conduct stock forecast and risk analysis. Its core technology combines a dynamic financial knowledge base with diverse data. |
HKUST
(Guangzhou) |
| Bronze Medal | Bubble Taco
(Team #2) |
The proposed solution collects Geographic Information System data of street vendors, including their business hours, movement tracking, consumption per capita of business area and real-time population heat map. By analysing these data, the system estimates the income level of the street vendorswhich can serve as alternative data for reference of personal credit evaluation. | CUHK
(Shenzhen) |
| Best Cross-Border Fintech Solution | Vision Carbon
(Team #20) |
(see Gold Medal winning project) | CityU |
| Social Impact Award | COREearth
(Team #5) |
A B2B carbon emission-based trading platform using AI and blockchain for emission monitoring, price prediction, corporate compliance and verification of carbon footprint. It is aimed to enhance the security and transparency of carbon trading between mainland China and EU. It also provides machine learning enabled analysis and carbon investment management service. | HKUST (Guangzhou) |
Fireside Chat: Leveraging FinTech to Create Social Impacts
Experts were invited to give a Fireside chat at the ceremony. Ms. Amy Hui, Head of Customer Lifecycle Management (CLCM), Retail Banking and Wealth Management, HSBC, Mr. Alan Cheung, Senior Director, Trust and AI Technologies, Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) and award-winning music producer and singer-song writer Mr. Hanjin Tan, from Hong Kong Digital Asset Society (HKDAS) shared their views and insights on how to leverage financial technology to create positive social impacts.
