They were only interns, they barely knew each other, but they had an idea.

That is the situation Mary Mbaire, Clement Ngatia, Brenda Gaceri, Thomas Mwaka and Brandon Kahuho found themselves in last year when they formed a team for the Fintech Innovation Week at Safaricom.

The event was held to get ideas from Safaricom staff to address the gaps they would have seen in the course of their work.

Another attraction for the team of interns was the KES800 per diem they would get for joining the hackathon, which they did after emerging amongst the top 20 teams.

Their idea was the creation of an application for the M-PESA super app that would enable users add their subscription services, schedule dates for payments as well as indicate whether they want to auto deduct or manually pay for their subscriptions.

After the initial rounds, they were amongst the 20 teams that got into a hackathon where they refined their ideas further. Their first problem was that they were all from the same line of work.

“We were all designers and so we did not have any technical background. We therefore came up with prototypes showing how we were going to be solving the recurring payments problem. That is basically all the technical stuff there was to the project. We made videos and had fun while at it,” Gacheri said.

The winning application would likely be the next big update on the M-PESA super app and part of the future of money.

After presenting their prototypes and much to their surprise, the group was pronounced winners of the hackathon. They won a cash prize of KES 250,000 and an all-expenses-paid trip to Dubai for their proposal.

Reality dawned on them during the award party and they started preparing for Dubai.

Early this year, the group packed for Dubai and they’ll live to tell tales of their first flight. After landing and checking in at the Avani Deira Dubai hotel, they hit the streets. From visiting tourist attractions such as the Ferrari World, experiencing the food culture and appreciating modern artistry, it is safe to say that Dubai was a hit.

“Apart from the fun and games of going to the various attractions in Dubai, it also entailed a trip to the big tech to learn how to innovate and continue innovating and doing better,” said Andrew Masila, Innovation Lead at Safaricom.

“Dubai was a breathtaking experience and the photos you see on social media are exactly what you get. We visited the Internet City and seeing the government setting aside infrastructure for internet companies such as Microsoft and Google in one locality was a breath of fresh air,” Clement said.

“We also used that chance to meet with our partners, the likes of Oracle and Dell and we got an opportunity to learn a lot from them,” Thomas added.

Currently, all five interns are absorbed into the organisation in the different technology departments.

The idea they had originally named M-Subscription app is now called M-PESA Standing Orders and is now undergoing testing with the staff at Safaricom. Its main users in the future would be people and companies which need to automate payments for different products.

Eneth Kubai, Head of Enterprise Architecture at Safaricom says the company has the goodwill and resources for the development of innovations.

“With a half a billion-innovation fund, the telco will continue to identify, scale solutions and put them into production,” she concludes.

Watch the video below to learn more.