Digi Coin
An application that digitizes America's piggy bank by making the transfer of change easy and completely digital, built with Ionic React. Merchants can add money to their account using cash/card. Change can be transferred to customers by scanning their barcode or entering their account number. Customers can also withdraw their change by transferring the money to their bank account, redeeming it for a gift card, or donating it to a charity.
This project currently runs all within the browser as it is a front end application. A backend database integration is needed to store the merchant and customers' data. The barcode scanner also needs to be implemented using the QuaggaJS library.
Demo Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwN0w07L14U&ab_channel=PrabhleenKaur
I was inspired to create this app as a side project after reading about the national coin shortage that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic. It especially impacted small businesses and consumers who rely on cash — I even noticed signs in my local general store and farmers' market telling customers to only pay with exact amounts of cash.
To build the app, and introduce myself to front end programming, I learned how to use Ionic, a mobile app framework, and React, a JavaScript library.
One of the technical difficulties I faced while working on this project was integrating Google Single Sign-On so that users could easily and securly log in to the app. After watching videos and reading articles about this topic, I spent a week to just create a simple web page where a user could sign on using their Google account. I did this using Node.js and once I understood the concept, I integrated it into my Ionic React application.