Qatar FinTech Hackathon 2025

The Qatar FinTech Hackathon 2025 is a four-day sprint where innovators collaborate to solve real-world financial challenges. Teams will ideate, prototype, and pitch their solutions with access to expert mentorship and a chance to win QAR 25,000 Pre-Investment Award to develop their Proof-of-Concept.

Themes

This year’s Qatar FinTech Hackathon focuses on three high-impact themes shaping the future of finance. Each theme reflects pressing challenges and emerging opportunities within the fintech landscape, offering teams a chance to innovate, solve real problems, and create solutions with real-world relevance.

Digital Lending

Access to Financing Challenges

Qatar's lending market faces accessibility issues for both individuals and SMEs. SMEs and individuals lack access to formal financing due to eligibility, the absence of traditional credit profiles, and micro-lending products are rare. There is also no structured mechanism for SMEs to offer salary advance to employees, leaving them without borrowing options.

WealthTech

Wealth-Building Opportunities for Individuals

Retail investors and individuals in Qatar have limited access to diversified wealth-building tools. Conventional banks offer restricted services to their own clients, while solutions like alternative investments, goal-based savings, and retirement planning remain underserved or inaccessible in Qatar in a Sharia-compliant digital format.

Emerging Technologies

Leveraging Emerging Tech for Financial Inclusion

A large segment of Qatar population is credit-invisible due to limited banking history, and no platforms currently score or reward ESG-aligned behavior. This restricts fair access to finance and slows adoption of sustainable financial behaviors. Despite QFC's recent digital assets and RWA framework, there is a gap in Sharia-compliant platforms that allow users to invest, trade, or tokenize assets like real estate or sukuk in a transparent, regulatory-approved, and inclusive way.