Atlanta-based Global Payments Inc. joined Caixabank, one of Spain‘s leading financial institutions, to sponsor an app “hackathon” Oct. 24-25 where 42 teams of developers, designers and programers competed to create new interactive mobile payments apps.

For four years the Barcelona, Spain-based Caixabank has sponsored the contest but this year is the first in which two cities participated in the FinAppsParty, which was simultaneously held in Atlanta and Barcelona.

The two venues – the Atlanta Tech Village and Palo Alto Foundation in Barcelona — were connected by a video link, allowing the participants in both locations to interact and share ideas via social networks.

A panel of judges composed of financial services and technical experts from Global Payments, the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) and TTV Capital selected the following winners:

Grand prize: Garcon!: Created by Scott Hankinson and Brian O’Connor provides users with a wearable app allowing streamlined checkout, multi-factor authentication, tagging, transaction history and purchase voiding.

2nd prize: Dichotomy: Created by Dominique Bashizi and Nathan Black allows users to use voice matching for transaction authentication.

3rd prize: Charge Forward: Created by Joslyn Beckert, Kevin Coleman, Nebi Erdogan and Haider Khan presents an innovative payment method selection that activates your top payment choices simply from your wrist position.

CaixaBank has been an international pioneer in the development of financial services for wearable devices, with the launch of the world’s first banking application for smartwatches as well as an application for Google Glass.

The bank was one of the first to anywhere in the world to adopt the hackathon format with the different teams of programmers compete over a 24-hour period to come up with innovative financial apps.

Winners from CaixaBank’s event will be announced at the awards ceremony during the BDigital Apps congress which will take place Nov. 11-12, 2014 in Barcelona.

In 2010 the two firms set up Comercia Global Payments in the Spanish market and last year the firms announced the launch of Comercia Global Payments Brasil, a 50/50 joint venture in the Brazilian payments market.

Jane Elliott, Global Payments’ chief of staff, said in a news release: “We are thrilled with the results of the event that showcased the amazing talent located right in our own backyard of Atlanta. We are grateful to CaixaBank for allowing us to partner with them on an event that has been successful in Barcelona since 2011.”

For more information, call Ms. Elliott at 770-829-8234 or by email investor.relations@globalpay.com or Amy Corn, 770-829-8755 media.relations@globalpay.com