In Search of KakaoBank's Idea Bankers: The BANKERTHON 2025 Story💡

KakaoBank's Technology XR Team held BANKERTHON 2025, the company's first in-house hackathon where employees, regardless of job function, could propose and build their own ideas, this past March. The event aimed to go beyond a simple gathering and to discover creative ideas that could lead to real business innovation.

Participants developed their ideas across three tracks—customer-facing services, productivity tools, and open topics—with extra points awarded especially for services utilizing AI technology. In addition, to encourage collaboration across different job functions, teams composed of two or more job functions received bonus points, reflecting the tech culture of 'Diverse voices, deep insights.'

To ensure the event ran smoothly, the following special strategies were introduced.

• BANKERTHON FA (Free Agent) System: For participants who had ideas but no team, this created an environment—much like a sports FA market—where talent and ideas could freely match up.
• In-house IP Review: To prevent copyright and information-use issues that could arise when an idea develops into an actual service, feedback from IP specialists was provided in advance.

A total of 20 teams and about 70 crew members took part in this hackathon, going through an intense, overnight two-day development process, giving KakaoBank an opportunity to further solidify its tech-driven organizational culture.