A 17-year-old Nigerian developer, Abdullah Ajala, has emerged winner of the Nomba x DevCareer Hackathon after outperforming more than 1,000 participants with an artificial intelligence-powered solution that helps small business owners manage credit sales through WhatsApp.
Ajala’s winning product, PayWise, earned him the $4,000 grand prize. The AI assistant enables traders to record customer debts using voice notes in their preferred languages, including Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa. It automatically logs transactions, tracks outstanding balances, sends payment reminders, and updates records once debts are settled.
The five-week hackathon attracted over 1,000 developers, with only 10 finalists making the shortlist before three winning teams emerged. Participants competed in both build and infrastructure tracks using Nomba’s live API stack, which includes checkout, virtual accounts, transfers, and webhooks.
According to Nomba’s Vice President of Product, Jafer Shariff, the competition focused on creating real-world solutions rather than experimental prototypes.
“The aim was never to just build something to demo. The aim was to ship something live, something customers can actually use and enjoy, and maybe something that becomes the foundation of a business for the developers themselves,” he said.
Ajala said the inspiration for PayWise came from observing local traders who relied on notebooks to record customer debts, a system vulnerable to loss and damage. By integrating the solution with WhatsApp, he aimed to simplify debt management using a platform already familiar to business owners.
He noted that one of the biggest technical challenges was enabling the AI to accurately interpret voice notes in Nigerian languages while preserving accents and context.
Aside from the grand prize winner, Glasspot, a digital money-pooling platform inspired by Nigeria’s traditional savings groups, claimed second place and received $1,500. Paye, a payment-routing platform that allows merchants to connect multiple payment gateways through a single integration, finished third.
Nomba’s Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Pelumi Aboluwarin, praised PayWise for demonstrating production-ready quality.
“What separates a hackathon build from something you’d trust with real money is whether it survives the same scrutiny we put our own systems through, and PayWise did,” he said.
The fintech company said the hackathon was designed to encourage developers to build practical AI and financial technology solutions using its infrastructure while strengthening Nigeria’s growing innovation ecosystem. Participants also received certifications, affiliate revenue-sharing opportunities, and continued access to Nomba’s developer community.
