PayPal AI Hackathon

Overview

The PayPal AI Hackathon is a global online event designed to explore the intersection of PayPal's payment platform and artificial intelligence. Participants are challenged to imagine and build innovative solutions, leveraging PayPal's extensive financial infrastructure alongside any AI tool, model, or platform. The hackathon encourages the creation of new agents, payment methods, business tools, social products, or other novel applications that showcase how AI can enhance and transform interactions with money. This hackathon is open to a wide range of participants, including developers, designers, founders, students, and general builders. There are no predefined problem statements or tracks, providing participants with the freedom to innovate across various domains. The core requirement is that every project must meaningfully integrate both PayPal technology and an AI component. Participants have the opportunity to turn ambitious ideas into working projects, experiment with new ways people, businesses, and AI agents can interact with payments, and compete for a share of over $69,750 in total prizes. The event also offers a platform to showcase projects to PayPal judges, developers, and the broader hackathon community, fostering learning and exploration of PayPal APIs, AI tools, and emerging development workflows. Projects can be developed individually or as part of a team, and can be either new initiatives or existing projects that undergo significant advancement during the hackathon period. The submission process requires a functional demo, a text description, identification of tools used, a public code repository on GitHub, and a demo video.

What to build

Build or update an application that integrates the PayPal developer platform (using the free sandbox environment) along with an AI tool, model, or platform of your choice. Projects can also utilize sponsor tools such as AG Grid, APIMatic, Astropods, Bryntum, Channel3, Elastic, KERNEL, Postman, Render, or Zapier, though using these is not required. The project must meaningfully integrate at least one PayPal technology, API, SDK, product, or developer capability, and meaningfully incorporate AI into its experience or functionality. A working prototype or proof of concept must be demonstrated, and the project must be sufficiently documented for evaluation.

Prizes

Key dates

• Start building with PayPal webinar2026-10-06 09:00 PST
• Power Your PayPal Hackathon Project with APIMatic Context Plugins webinar2026-10-07 09:00 PST
• Build a payments dashboard without building a dashboard webinar2026-10-12 07:00 PST
• Start building with PayPal webinar2026-10-13 01:00 PST
• Deadline2026-11-12 12:00 PST

Eligibility

Must be above the legal age of majority in country of residence. Open to all countries/territories, excluding standard exceptions.

How to enter

1. Get a PayPal Developer account.
2. Review example projects and brainstorm your own.
3. Build or update an application that integrates the PayPal developer platform (using the free sandbox environment) along with an AI tool, model, or platform of your choice.
4. Submit your project including a text description, functional demo (clear setup/run instructions or hosted URL), identification of tools used, a public code repository on GitHub, and a demo video under 3 minutes uploaded to YouTube.

Submission requirements

• Project must meaningfully integrate at least one PayPal technology, API, SDK, product, or developer capability.
• Project must meaningfully incorporate AI into the experience or functionality.
• Project must demonstrate a working prototype or proof of concept.
• Project must be sufficiently documented for judges to understand and evaluate it.
• Project must comply with the Official Rules.
• Submission must include a text description explaining features and functionality.
• Submission must include a functional demo (either clear setup/run instructions in code repository or a hosted demo URL).
• Submission must identify which tools were used and explain how they were used.
• Submission must include a public and open-source code repository on GitHub with a license file.
• Submission must include a demo video under 3 minutes, uploaded to YouTube and publicly visible.

Judging criteria

• Technological Implementation: How thoroughly and skillfully does the project use PayPal Developer Platform and AI tool(s)? Does the project reflect genuine effort and a working, non-trivial implementation?
• Design: Does the project deliver a complete, coherent product experience — not just a technical proof of concept?
• Potential Impact: Does the project make a credible, specific case for solving a real problem for a real audience — and does the solution actually address that problem based on what's demonstrated?
• Innovation/Idea: How creative and novel is the concept and does the project differ from existing concepts?
• Presentation: Does the video clearly demonstrate the project working end-to-end? Does the pitch communicate what problem is solved, who it's for, and why it matters? Is the overall presentation easy to follow?

Sponsors & partners

Resources

• PayPal AI Hackathon Devpost Page
• Start building with PayPal webinar (Oct 6th)
• Power Your PayPal Hackathon Project with APIMatic Context Plugins webinar (Oct 7th)
• Build a payments dashboard without building a dashboard webinar (Oct 12th)
• Start building with PayPal webinar (Oct 13th)