MasterCard announced a new series of 10 hackathons spanning the globe today. The series will focus on developers and be called MasterCard Masters of Code.

You might be forgiven for thinking this was a new announcement for an old event. MasterCard has sponsored a number of FinTech events already in 2014, including at least one last month. Honestly, we can’t keep track of them — we know one was held as recently as November, in conjunction with Money2020.

A spokesperson told Bank Innovation, “Today, we announced a MasterCard-owned, -sponsored and -coordinated  series around the world in 10 cities to find the best of the best and award them a seal as Masters of Code champions.” The event is co-sponsored by hackathon producers AngelHack and will give developers access to MasterCard APIs.

A press release announcing the series says, “The participating teams will compete to create innovative prototypes that demonstrate artful coding and design skills while also articulating clear business use cases — all focused on driving the next generation of commerce applications.”

The 10-event series kicks off in Sydney on Feb. 7 and concludes in Silicon Valley in December. There will also be a mid-year Silicon Valley event in the series. At the second Silicon Valley event, winners from each region will compete for a $100,000 prize, as well as:

• Two weeks on-site at the MasterCard Start Path accelerator location in Dublin, Ireland, or an alternate remote program;
• Six months of mentoring from a member of the MasterCard Open API executive team and the Start Path program team; and
• Free payment processing for up to $250,000 in transactions for the first 12 months using Simplify Commerce.

Each event will have  a particular theme. The Sydney event will center around MasterPass and commerce. Other events, which take place in other parts of the Asia-Pacific region as well as the Americas and Europe, may focus on topics such as person-to-person payments, MasterCard indicated.

Mario Shiliashki, SVP of emerging payments at MasterCard, said the company expects 100 to 200 attendees at each event, though that can change quickly. The November event brought nearly 1,000 attendees.

“We envision this as a multiyear program,” Shiliashki said, ” to reach developers thinking globally and acting locally.”  Teams from different regions may even be called upon to work together and collaborate at the final Silicon Valley event. Shiliashki said a major goal of the series was to bring together local solutions from all over the world and see if they can applied to global problems — “meaningful results from, good ideas.”