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ILP Pathways (Benedict College) — ILF Grant Progress Report

Chantil Wright Galloway — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 18:31:40 +0000

Brief Project Description

ILP Pathways brings Interledger Protocol education to Benedict College, a historically Black college in Columbia, South Carolina. Through a three-tier cascade model, twelve students (the "Benedict 12") learn the Interledger Protocol and Open Payments in a FinTech course and on a Rafiki deployment in our Business Innovation Lab. They then consult with 15–20 Black- and minority-owned Columbia businesses and mentor 60 youth, ages 8–18, at a Digital Finance and Innovation Summer Camp. All curriculum will be released under a Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0) license so other HBCUs can adopt the model.

Project Update

The grant began in March 2026, and the foundation is in place. Our biggest win this fall: the Benedict 12 cohort has been selected, and our FinTech course, BA 439 FinTech Strategy and Management, is approved for Spring 2027. Dr. James Ross is now building it in Canvas, the College's learning management system.

Our main struggle has been timing. Institutional course approval and procurement move on the academic calendar, not the grant calendar. At our kickoff with the ILF Program Team, we agreed to move the summer camp to 2027, and a no-cost extension set the project end date at September 1, 2027. In September we recalibrated the full timeline with the Program Team: Fall 2026 is our build-and-recruit semester, the course launches in Spring 2027, and the camp runs in June–July 2027.

Project Impact & Target Audience(s)

ILP Pathways serves Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities at every tier:

Benedict College students. Benedict is a historically Black college, and most of our students are first-generation college attendees. Few have had exposure to payments infrastructure or open financial standards. The Benedict 12 gain technical skills in Interledger and Open Payments, paid stipends, and consulting experience.
Black- and minority-owned small businesses in Columbia. Student consulting teams will help 15–20 businesses explore lower-cost, interoperable payment options through Open Payments.
K-12 youth from underserved Columbia neighborhoods. Sixty youth, ages 8–18, will learn digital finance from near-peer college mentors who look like them.

The project supports the Interledger Foundation's mission by growing awareness of Interledger in communities that have been left out of financial technology, training a new group of HBCU students on Rafiki and Open Payments, and releasing open curriculum other institutions can reuse. The project is in its foundation phase, so outcomes will be measured starting with the Spring 2027 course, with pre/post assessments of technical proficiency and financial literacy running through the summer 2027 camp.

Progress on Objectives, Key Activities

Objective	Status
Grant executed; ILF kickoff	Complete
Faculty capacity-building	Underway, supported by ILF contractor Casey Ariel Diké
FinTech course approved and scheduled	Complete: BA 439 FinTech Strategy and Management, Spring 2027; course build in Canvas underway
Benedict 12 selected	Complete
Rafiki infrastructure and Open Payments testing	Specifications complete; installation being coordinated with College IT
Minority-owned business partnerships (15–20)	Outreach begins alongside cohort training
BA 439 launch	On schedule for Spring 2027
Summer Camp for 60 K-12 youth	On schedule for June–July 2027

How our plan has evolved:

One course instead of two. Our proposal described an Interledger internship and a separate FinTech course. Working with our dean, we consolidated both into BA 439, the School of Business's special-projects course. This avoided a new-course approval cycle and keeps the Interledger content, hands-on Rafiki work, and consulting projects in one place.
Faculty capacity-building. At ILF's direction before award, capacity-building is provided by ILF contractor Casey Ariel Diké at no cost to the grant, in place of the outside consultant in our original budget.
Summer camp moved to 2027. Agreed at kickoff, so the camp can build on a fully trained Benedict 12.

Lab infrastructure specifications: two servers running Ubuntu Server LTS, a managed network switch, battery backup, and encrypted backup storage. One server will sit in the Innovation Lab and one in our Cybersecurity area.

Communications and Marketing

Recruitment for the Benedict 12 was carried out across the Tyrone Adam Burroughs School of Business and Entrepreneurship. Our budget does not include paid marketing. Broader public sharing will begin with the Spring 2027 course launch and the release of our first open curriculum modules.

What's Next?

Over the rest of the grant period we will:

Install the lab infrastructure and bring our Rafiki node online
Begin the Benedict 12's hands-on training and baseline assessments
Finish building BA 439 and launch it in Spring 2027
Recruit 15–20 minority-owned business partners and match them with student consulting teams
Develop the K-12 camp curriculum for three age groups, then recruit 60 youth and deliver the camp in June–July 2027
Award FinTech Certificates, host a community showcase, and publish our open curriculum

Community Support

We would welcome connections with ILF grantees who have deployed Rafiki in a university or teaching-lab setting, especially anyone who has built student exercises around Open Payments. We are also interested in guest speakers from the Interledger community for our Spring 2027 cohort, and in introductions to organizations running youth financial-literacy programs.

Additional Comments

We are grateful to the ILF Program Team for their flexibility in aligning the project with the academic calendar.

Relevant Links/Resources (optional)

Benedict College

Kavodax: Exploring Open, Standards-Based Cross-Border Payments using Stablecoins

Gharsa Amin (Kavodax) — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 19:10:27 +0000

Kavodax: Exploring Open, Standards-Based Cross-Border Payments

Tags: #opensource #interledgerprotocol #ilfgrantee #interledgerfoundation

The Payment Problem We're Exploring

Sending money across borders today usually means building a custom, one-off connection between whichever two financial platforms are involved. Every new partner, every new corridor, every new bank means engineering time spent solving the same problem again from scratch. That friction slows things down and drives up costs, costs that are ultimately passed on to the people who can least afford them.

This hits hardest along corridors like Africa and Latin America, where many workers send remittances home to support their families.

These payments are often slow, expensive, and dependent on intermediaries that add fees at every step. Meanwhile, smaller financial platforms serving these regions frequently lack the resources to build and maintain custom integrations with every bank or payment network they need to reach. The result is a fragmented system where good technology exists but doesn't talk to itself and the people paying the price are the ones with the least room to absorb it.

Who Is This For?

This project centers on two groups. First, senders — typically workers sending cross-border payments to family or business partners abroad, who need a fast, affordable, and reliable way to move money internationally. Second, independent platforms and financial service providers who want to connect to Kavodax's payment network to serve their own customers, but don't have the engineering resources to build a bespoke integration for every partner they work with.

What We Want to Test

Core hypothesis: Open Payments can help independent financial platforms connect to Kavodax's orchestration layer to send and receive cross-border payments by replacing custom, bilateral integrations with a single, standardized way to interact.

We want to find out whether an outside platform — one that has never spoken to Kavodax before — can discover a Kavodax wallet address, negotiate a payment, and complete a transaction using nothing but the Open Payments standard. If that works, it suggests a real path toward lower-cost, faster-to-launch financial services for underserved corridors.

The Payment Flow We'll Explore

[Independent Open Payments participant] → [Resolves Kavodax wallet address] → [Open Payments negotiation: incoming payment → quote → outgoing payment] → [Execution through Kavodax's orchestration and settlement infrastructure] → [Funds delivered to recipient]

In practice: an outside sender interacts with a Kavodax wallet address using the Open Payments protocol. Kavodax creates the required payment resources, and its existing orchestration layer takes care of actually moving the money — whether that's over traditional banking rails or through stablecoin-backed balances — while the sender never needs a custom-built connection to make it happen.

Figure 1: The Kavodax dashboard — customer wallet balances (USDC, USDT, CAGD) and orchestration actions (Send, On-ramp, Off-ramp) that the Open Payments layer will sit on top of.

How We Plan to Use Open Payments

Kavodax operates as an orchestration layer: our own APIs sit at the center, coordinating everything from account balances and wallet infrastructure to banking rails and settlement partners across the corridors we serve. Open Payments will sit above that orchestration layer as a standard interface, not a replacement for it. It handles how a sender and Kavodax find each other, agree on the terms of a payment, and communicate intent — using wallet addresses, quotes, and incoming/outgoing payment resources. Our existing APIs and transaction engine still handle the actual movement and safekeeping of funds, working alongside our banking partners and wallet infrastructure. The goal is for Open Payments to become the common language external partners can use to reach Kavodax's orchestration layer, instead of each one requiring its own custom connection.

What We're Already Building

Kavodax isn't starting from zero. We're already live across 70+ countries, with a working dashboard and public APIs powering on-ramp and off-ramp flows. Customers hold balances in stablecoins like USDC and USDT, alongside CAGD (CAD Global Dollars) — our own CAD-backed stablecoin — and can already move funds in and out of those balances in a live sandbox environment.

Figure 2: Kavodax's off-ramp corridors each connecting stablecoin balances to local payout rails.

What's still ahead, and what this Accelerator is specifically for, is the interoperability layer on top of our orchestration APIs: standards-level Open Payments support (rather than only internal, Kavodax-to-Kavodax flows), the authorization flow required for a truly independent participant to connect (GNAP-based grant negotiation and HTTP message signing), and validating all of this against an outside Open Payments implementation rather than just our own systems talking to themselves.

What We Hope to Demonstrate

By the end of the Accelerator, we want to show that an independent Open Payments participant — with no prior relationship to Kavodax — can resolve a Kavodax wallet address, complete the full payment flow, and have funds settle through our existing orchestration infrastructure. Success looks like:

A working payment completed end-to-end by an outside party with no custom integration.
The required authorization steps (including secure message signing) functioning correctly between two independent systems.
Transaction events properly recorded and monitored under our existing compliance controls.

Looking Beyond the Accelerator

If successful, this proof of concept becomes the foundation for onboarding real partner platforms across the 70+ countries and corridors we already serve — without the months of custom integration work that would otherwise be required. It also lays the groundwork for expanding CAGD and our orchestration APIs into new settlement corridors, and bringing more financial service providers into a shared, interoperable network built on top of the infrastructure we've already deployed.

What We're Excited to Learn

We're eager to see how Open Payments performs when a truly independent counterpart — not just our own systems talking to themselves — interacts with Kavodax's orchestration layer in practice. We also want to learn what parts of the onboarding and authorization process create friction for outside developers, so we can share that back with the wider Interledger community.

About Kavodax

Kavodax Inc. is a registered Money Services Business (FINTRAC) and licensed Payment Service Provider with the Bank of Canada, operating as an orchestration layer for faster, more affordable cross-border payments. We're live across 70+ countries, with public APIs powering customer wallets, stablecoin balances — including CAGD, our own CAD-backed stablecoin — and live on/off-ramp corridors. We're grateful to the Interledger Foundation for the opportunity to test whether open standards can make that experience faster and fairer for everyone who connects to our network.

Kavodax Email address: contact@kavodax.com
Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gharsanay-amin/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/kavodax/?viewAsMember=true
https://x.com/Kavodax

Wava: Exploring How Open Payments Could Connect Latin America's Domestic Payment Rails

Carlos Agudelo — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 22:28:41 +0000

An Open Payments Accelerator project by Wava · Colombia and Peru

The Payment Problem We're Exploring

Latin America has quietly built some of the fastest and cheapest domestic payment systems in the world. In Colombia, money moves instantly through wallets tens of millions of people use daily. In Peru, QR payments clear through the compensation chamber in seconds. Inside any one country, paying has never been easier.

Cross a border, and that progress disappears. Each system was built for its own market, with its own rules, its own currency, and no shared way to address an account on the other side. A business operating in Colombia and Peru cannot simply move money between them. It either builds a separate integration, banking relationship, and compliance process in each country, or falls back on correspondent banking and card networks that are slower and costlier than the local rails sitting at both ends of the same transaction.

The businesses most likely to benefit from instant, low-cost payments are often the least able to reach across a border.

Who Is This For?

On the sending side is an everyday customer in Peru paying for something — a marketplace purchase, a subscription, a service. They want to pay the way they always do, without knowing the business is in another country.

On the receiving side is a merchant operating across more than one Latin American market, carrying the fragmentation: separate integrations per country, balances in unconnected systems, and the cost of moving its own money home. For a large company, it is an annoyance. For a smaller merchant, it is often why they never expand across the border at all.

What We Want to Test

We believe Open Payments can help merchants operating across Latin American markets to collect in one country and receive funds in another, by providing a shared way to address, quote, and clear a payment between systems that were never designed to connect.

What we do not know is whether an open standard can sit above national infrastructure without requiring it to change. Domestic rails are stable, regulated, and widely adopted; anything asking them to adopt something new is unlikely to get far. What interests us is interoperability that is additive rather than disruptive.

The Payment Flow We'll Explore

We have deliberately narrowed to a single flow, in one direction, between two countries where we already operate.

Customer in Peru → pays through a local payment method → Open Payments addressing, quoting and clearing → merchant receives funds in Colombian pesos

A customer in Peru pays using a local QR-based method, cleared through the compensation chamber. The Colombian destination account is identified through an Open Payments address, and the conversion is quoted before anything moves. The transfer clears between two connector nodes we operate, and the merchant is paid out in Colombian pesos through a domestic rail.

The merchant sees one transaction and one reconciled record instead of two disconnected balances. The return direction is a stretch goal, not a promise.

How We Plan to Use Open Payments

Open Payments sits in the middle of this flow, not at either end. The local methods on both sides stay exactly as they are.

Addressing — a standard way to identify the receiving account across the border, so neither country's system needs a bespoke integration with the other.
Quoting — a consistent way to know what a cross-currency transfer costs before it executes.
Clearing — moving value between two connector nodes we run ourselves, using Rafiki, so neither domestic rail needs a direct relationship with the other.

What We Hope to Demonstrate

By the end of the four months, we aim to show a working corridor between Peru and Colombia in a controlled near-live environment. Three indicators will tell us whether it worked:

A payment completes end to end — collected in Peru, cleared at a locked rate, paid out in Colombian pesos. Funds release only against confirmed bank settlement: that gate is by design, not a gap.
Every transaction reconciles across the clearing record, our ledger, and settlement on each rail. Where it does not, we want to know exactly why.
At least one merchant we already work with completes the flow and tells us whether it solves their real problem.

We are not aiming to launch a product in four months. We are aiming to find out whether this works, and to be honest about where it does not.

Looking Beyond the Accelerator

If it works, the next steps are real production volume and extending the pattern to further markets, Ecuador being the most obvious. The more interesting question is whether it generalises: a layer that connects two countries without either rail changing could, in principle, connect many.

What We're Excited to Learn

We arrive with real infrastructure but limited hands-on experience with Interledger. That is exactly why the Accelerator appealed to us. Three questions we want to answer:

How do our cross-currency design, locked quotes, clearing decoupled from batched settlement, and gated release hold up in practice? FX is the one piece we've never operated; pressure-testing it with the Interledger team is the draw.
Where does the standard hold against real domestic infrastructure, and where does it strain? We expect to find edges the documentation does not show.
What does a merchant need to see for this to feel trustworthy? Interoperability only matters if the person receiving the money believes it will arrive.

About Wava

Wava builds API-based collections, disbursements, and treasury tools on top of Latin America's local payment rails, for fintechs, marketplaces, and e-commerce businesses that need to move money through the methods their customers actually use. Our infrastructure is live in Colombia and Peru, under local entities and banking sponsorship in both markets.

Our founding team: Carlos Agudelo, who has spent over a decade building companies across the region, and Luciano Pallotti, who previously built infrastructure for corporates and governments and now builds and runs Wava's platform. We came to this problem by hitting it ourselves — after doing the unglamorous work of establishing banking and compliance in two countries, we still couldn't offer merchants something as basic as moving their money between them.

Learn more at wava.co.
Explore our Public API at docs.wava.co.

Happy by ShujaaPay: Exploring Open Payments-Native Content Hosting & Real-time Mobile Wallet Settlement

Rewel Mumbo — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 13:35:58 +0000

The Payment Problem We're Exploring

Amina Wanjiku produces viral digital stories and cultural documentation on local heritage from her base in Turkana.
Although her work regularly reaches hundreds of thousands of viewers, her monthly income from these videos remains negligible.
Crucially, this shortfall stems from a deep-seated infrastructure gap: global creator platforms rely heavily on credit cards, operating under the assumption that fans will set up recurring monthly subscriptions.

In Kenya, however, credit card adoption remains below 5%, whereas more than 30 million adults rely on Safaricom's M-Pesa every day for their routine transactions.

Consequently, existing payment pathways struggle to support localized monetization.
Viewers who wish to back creators or unlock individual video segments for Kes 20 shillings (approx $0.015) frequently lack access to international cards.
Furthermore, regional ad rates remain low, and international payment systems rarely support direct mobile wallet payouts without imposing steep exchange fees or extended hold periods.
As a result, willing audiences and local creators remain separated by fundamentally incompatible payment systems.

Who Is This For?

To address these challenges, this initiative focuses on two distinct groups within the creative economy:

Content Receivers (Creators): Independent video journalists, podcasters, writers, and educators across East Africa who require direct payouts into their primary mobile money accounts without payout minimums or platform holds.
Content Consumers (Supporters): Domestic mobile users looking to send small tips or pay for individual pieces of content directly from their phone balances, alongside international fans seeking a straightforward way to contribute in their local currencies without high transfer fees.

Figure 2: Happy Portal creator dashboard showing live tips, content unlocks, and mobile balance management.

What We Want to Test

CORE HYPOTHESIS: Open Payments standards can enable sustainable digital content monetization in Africa by bridging global funding sources with local mobile money rails through low-cost micro-transactions.

To test this hypothesis, the project evaluates whether open payment standards offer a practical alternative to restrictive paywalls and conventional credit card processing.
By piloting sub-shilling media metering alongside low-cost single-item unlocks, we aim to demonstrate that flexible payment options can effectively sustain creators while remaining accessible to mobile-first users.

The Payment Flow We'll Explore

Specifically, the primary payment workflow to be tested during the program connects online user interactions directly to real-time mobile wallet settlement:
[Supporter on Mobile or Web] → [Tap 'Unlock for KES 20'] → [Open Payments & Interledger Routing] → [Instant M-Pesa Payout to Creator]

In practice, when a supporter selects content on the Happy Portal, the system seamlessly resolves the creator's wallet address, generates a fee quote, and requests transaction approval.
Value then moves across the Interledger network, granting immediate access to the content while instantly settling funds into the creator's M-Pesa account.

Figure 3: Overview of the payment and settlement architecture from user action to wallet deposit.

How We Plan to Use Open Payments

To accomplish this, Open Payments serves as the underlying interoperability protocol for the portal, successfully replacing proprietary payment gateways and fragmented networks:

Universal Wallet Addresses: Standardized handles simplify account discovery and payment routing across different platforms.

Quotes and Incoming Payments: Real-time exchange rates are calculated before processing, providing clear conversion details between foreign currencies and Kenyan Shillings.

Interactive Grants: Defined authorization parameters give supporters clear control over spending limits without exposing underlying account details.

Micro Payments: Enabling sub-shilling media metering and low-cost single-item unlocks for fine-grained content access.

Ultimately, routing transactions over the Interledger Protocol enables effortless cross-currency transfers.
This allows international supporters to pay in their preferred local currency, while creators receive their earnings directly in local mobile money.

What We Hope to Demonstrate

By the end of the accelerator, we want to show something concrete: that a supporter anywhere in the world can tap once, and a creator in remote Kenya can receive real money in their M-Pesa wallet seconds later, without either of them touching a bank account, a card, or a foreign exchange desk.
More specifically, we aim to validate three key outcomes:

Working Global-to-Local Rails: Open Payments and the Interledger Protocol can carry real value between global wallets and local mobile money rails, not as a proof of concept on a slide but as a working flow that ordinary people can use.
Meaningful Micro-Payments: Creators can earn from micro-payments small enough to feel natural, where twenty Kenyan shillings (approx $0.015) is a transaction and not a rounding error, and where the creator keeps the vast majority of what their audience pays.
Reusable Open Tooling: This model can be opened up for other builders, so the tools we develop around RFC 9421 signing, GNAP authorization, and mobile money settlement become reusable pieces that strengthen the wider Interledger ecosystem.

The deeper point is about fairness. Right now, the global creator economy extracts value from African creators and returns very little of it. If we can prove that open, interoperable payment rails can reverse that flow, we will have shown something that matters far beyond Kenya.

Looking Beyond the Accelerator

Following the initial pilot in Kenya, subsequent expansion plans will focus on integrating additional mobile money providers across East and West Africa, including MTN MoMo and Airtel Money.
Connecting regional mobile wallet infrastructure directly to open financial standards builds broader access across the digital economy.
In tandem with this growth, the project also intends to publish open-source client adapters to help regional publishers easily implement similar payment capabilities.

What We're Excited to Learn

From a behavioral standpoint, we want to observe how African audiences respond to frictionless micro-unlocks compared to traditional monthly subscriptions.
Technically, we are eager to evaluate Open Payments API, RFC 9421 signature verification and Rafiki Interledger connectors over volatile mobile data connections, and we look forward to sharing these findings openly with the broader Interledger community.

About ShujaaPay

ShujaaPay is a financial technology infrastructure company based in Nairobi Kenya, founded by Rewel Mumbo and Naaman Kiptoo.
We build open, borderless payment rails for Africa's digital workforce, developing AI-powered financial inclusion software that connects open payment standards directly with African payment networks.

Through Happy, our goal is to give African creators full financial access and dignity. Accordingly, we are deeply grateful to the Interledger Foundation for supporting this work through the Open Payments Accelerator Program 2026.

## Our Team

Rewel Mumbo is a Senior Data Scientist, entrepreneur, and student at The Open University of Kenya; he leads ShujaaPay as the Founder and CEO, while Naaman Kiptoo is a software engineer, co-founder and our Chief Technology Officer.

What We're Already Building

ShujaaPay is not starting from scratch. We already operate a production-ready Open Payments gateway with a self-hosted Rafiki connector, live Bank and M-Pesa B2C payout connectors, and a TigerBeetle double-entry ledger engine.
We are also building cross-border payment tools for freelancers, remote workers, and digital creators who need to receive payments from international clients and platforms without the delays and fees of legacy intermediaries.
Our work extends to AI-agent commerce through the ShujaaPay Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server, which enables autonomous agents to execute cross-border payouts to bank accounts and mobile money rails.

Communities and Markets We Serve

We work with independent African creators, freelancers, and digital workers who earn from global platforms but are locked out of fair payout rails.
Our markets span Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, and the wider East and West African region, with plans to expand to North America, Middle Eeast, Europe, Latin America and South Asia.

What Motivated Us

We started ShujaaPay after witnessing firsthand how African creators and freelancers are excluded from the global digital economy. Through research at The Open University of Kenya and creator communities like the Digital Content Creators Association of Kenya (DCCAK), we identified several financial interoperability gaps in content monetization.

International payment platforms charge exorbitant fees, impose arbitrary holds, and often refuse to serve African accounts entirely. Domestically, mobile money dominates, yet it remains disconnected from global payment standards.
We built ShujaaPay to close that gap and to prove that open protocols like Open Payments and Interledger can deliver real financial inclusion for the Global South.

Learn more and follow our journey at:
https://happy.shujaapay.me
https://www.shujaapay.me,
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rewel-mumbo-20ab4253/, https://www.linkedin.com/in/nv-ms/,
https://www.linkedin.com/company/shujaapay/

Interledger Foundation Launches 2026 NextGen Higher Education Grant

Julaire Hall — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 17:26:50 +0000

Universities and higher education institutions are invited to submit Letters of Intent for projects preparing students to shape the future of open, inclusive digital finance.

The 2026 Call for Letters of Intent for the Interledger–NextGen Higher Education Grant is now open! This grant supports universities and higher education institutions that want to create meaningful learning and hands-on experiences around Open Payments, interoperability, digital financial inclusion, and emerging financial technologies.

Through NextGen, institutions can receive up to USD $50,000 for projects of up to 12 months that give students opportunities to learn, research, experiment, build, and engage with the ideas and technologies shaping the future of digital financial systems.

For the Interledger Foundation, education is an important part of building a more open and interoperable financial ecosystem. Creating the infrastructure for a different kind of financial future also means ensuring the next generation of developers, entrepreneurs, researchers, policymakers, and financial leaders has the knowledge and opportunity to help build it.

NextGen is about investing in people as much as it is about technology. If we want a future where financial systems are more open, interoperable, and inclusive, we have to give students the opportunity to understand these systems, question them, and imagine what comes next. Education is an important part of Interledger’s strategy because the students learning and experimenting today will be among the people designing, implementing, and advocating for the financial infrastructure of tomorrow.
— Chris Lawrence, Chief Program Officer, Interledger Foundation

Over the past several years, the Interledger Foundation has worked with higher education institutions across different regions to explore what this kind of learning can look like in practice. Our NextGen education community has included institutions such as the University of Cape Town in South Africa, Bowie State University, Benedict College, and Alabama A&M University in the United States, The Hague University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, United States International University-Africa in Kenya, Covenant University in Nigeria, and Western Sydney University in Australia.

Across these institutions, students and faculty have explored Open Payments through workshops, curriculum development, research, hackathons, technical experimentation, entrepreneurship programs, and other campus-based activities. Each institution has approached the work differently, reflecting an important part of the NextGen vision: building local capacity while connecting students to a broader global conversation about the future of financial systems.

What We’re Looking For in 2026

We are interested in partnering with institutions that can create faculty-led, student-centered initiatives that move beyond awareness and give students meaningful opportunities to engage with open payments and digital financial inclusion.

Projects may include curriculum development, student labs, research, hackathons, technical exploration, prototype development, interdisciplinary learning, and other approaches that connect academic learning with real-world challenges.

Institutions interested in participating are invited to submit a two-page Letter of Intent on their university’s official letterhead, introducing their institution, proposed project, intended students and participants, key activities, anticipated outcomes, and connection to Open Payments and interoperability.

Shortlisted institutions will subsequently be invited to develop and submit a full proposal.

Learn more about the Interledger–NextGen Higher Education Grant, review the 2026 Program Resource Kit to access the application guidelines, and submit your Letter of Intent through the Interledger Foundation’s application portal. Applications for Phase 1 are reviewed on an ongoing basis, and applications close on Monday, December 14, 2026.

We’re looking forward to meeting the next group of institutions and students, helping to imagine what an open and inclusive financial future can become.

APPLY NOW BUTTON

FLIQA'S Second Interim Project Report

Ela Oblak — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 14:59:15 +0000

Brief Project Description

FLIQA uses open banking to enable direct account-to-account payments, helping businesses reduce costs, eliminate intermediaries, and manage finances more efficiently. Users enjoy greater transparency and security with every transaction.
By integrating the Interledger Protocol alongside traditional banking infrastructure, FLIQA aims to improve interoperability between different payment systems and expand access to modern payment infrastructure for SMEs and underserved communities.

Through Open Payments APIs, the platform supports new payment flows across currencies and ledgers, providing a secure, low-cost alternative to card- and cash-based payments while giving businesses greater control of their funds.

Project Update

Months 5-8 marked an important time for the project: Interledger moved from being an additional account type in our data model to becoming a payment method users can choose, price, and complete. To support this transition, we rebuilt the FLIQA payment dialog around the Open Payments flow, extended the backend and the Payment/Service API to treat payment type as a first-class dimension, and introduced an ILF Sandbox so that partners and merchants can see and test the flow end- to- end without any production dependency.

In parallel, we concentrated our business and market development efforts primarily on Colombia. We conducted a detailed assessment of the Colombian regulatory environment for fintechs and financial institutions - including the transition towards a mandatory Open Finance regime under Decree 0368 of April 2026, the licensing perimeter of the Superintendencia Financiera, the position of small community banks and savings-and-credit cooperatives, and the operating conditions facing micro, small, and medium enterprises. We also assessed the practical requirements and implications of establishing a foreign fintech business in the market.

The most significant milestone of the period is that we made first contact with Bre-B, Colombia's interoperable instant payment system operated by Banco de la República. We connected to the Bre-B sandbox and successfully performed a manual payment initialisation. This is the first time FLIQA has touched a Colombian domestic payment rail directly, and it opens a credible path to offering ILP-based and domestic instant payments side by side within the same checkout.

The honest counterpoint is that the UAE workstream remained deprioritised through this period. The geopolitical conditions identified in our previous report have not improved. We therefore made a deliberate decision to concentrate our engineering and commercial resources on Colombia rather than divide capacity between two markets.

Project Impact & Target Audience(s)

Our target communities are underserved individuals and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Colombia. The groups that ultimately benefit include Women & Girls, who remain measurably behind in both access to and active use of financial products in Colombia; Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, particularly Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities in rural departments where exclusion is deepest; People with disabilities, for whom a digital-first, device-independent payment flow removes the need to reach a physical branch; and informal-economy participants and rural populations with no bank branch within reach.

What changed in this period is that the impact case moved from argument to mechanism. Colombia's headline inclusion figure is high - roughly 96% of adults hold some deposit or credit product - but the distribution behind it is what matters for our work. Rural access sits around 66% against near-universal urban access, and active use falls to roughly 53% in rural areas against about 89% in urban ones. A persistent gender gap of several percentage points runs through both access and use. Meanwhile, more than 70% of transactions in the country are still made in cash. The problem is therefore not primarily account ownership; it is that a very large number of people and micro-businesses hold an account they cannot but cannot use it practically for transactions, at a price they can accept, in the places they live and trade.

This period’s work translates to that. Showing the fee to the user before they authorize a payment is not cosmetic: for a merchant with thin margins and for a payer sending a small amount, an unpriced payment is an untrusted payment. Removing the country-and-provider selection step in favor of direct provider selection reduces the number of decisions a first-time or low-confidence user has to make. Accepting a Payment Pointer as an input, with validation, means an ILP identity is now something a Colombian merchant can be paid through without understanding anything about the protocol behind it. And the Bre-B connection means we can put an interoperable, effectively free-to-end-user domestic rail next to the ILP rail in the same interface, which is the practical form financial inclusion takes in this market.

On the institutional side, our regulatory research identified a specific and underserved constituency that we had not fully appreciated at the outset: Colombia's savings-and-credit cooperatives and small community financial institutions. Around 171 cooperatives carry out financial intermediation in Colombia, serving over four million members, employing close to 14,000 people, and operating across 23 of the country's 32 departments. In roughly 40 municipalities, a cooperative is the only financial intermediary with any physical presence at all. Because most of these entities sit under the Superintendencia de Economía Solidaria rather than the Superintendencia Financiera, they fall largely outside the perimeter of the mandatory Open Finance regime and are slower to appear in the national instant-payment ecosystem. That is precisely the gap an interoperable, ledger-agnostic protocol is built to close, and it has become an explicit part of our Colombian impact thesis.

Progress on Objectives, Key Activities

1. Product: a payment dialog rebuilt for Interledger

Our first report described extending the data model to hold Open Payments accounts and payment pointers. In this period, we took the next step and altered the user-facing payment dialog so that an ILF payment is a first-class option rather than a special case added onto an open-banking flow. Three changes were necessary:

Direct provider selection at the start of the payment. Previously, a payer had to select a country and then a provider before anything else could happen - a sequence that makes sense for bank-based open banking but not for Interledger, where the provider is not tied to a jurisdiction. The payer now selects the provider directly when the payment is initiated.
Display the fee to the user. The dialog now displays the applicable fee before the payer authorizes the payment. This is a transparency requirement we consider non-negotiable for the communities we serve, and it is also what allows a payer to make a genuine comparison between an ILP payment and the alternatives available to them.
Payment Pointer as a direct input, with validation. The payer can enter a Payment Pointer as the destination, with format and resolution checks performed at entry, so that errors are identified immediately rather than at settlement.

Taken together, these changes mean the Open Payments flow is now materially shorter and clearer than our standard open-banking flow, which is a useful demonstration.

2. Backend and API: payment type as a first-class dimension

Supporting these changes required corresponding changes to the underlying infrastructure. We altered the payment providers table to hold the supported payment types and altered the provider service to filter providers by that type. On the Payment API and Service API, we exposed the listing of payment providers by payment type - Open Banking, ILF, and future types - so that any client of our API can retrieve exactly the set of providers relevant to the rail it intends to use.

This is deliberately generic. It means adding a further rail - Bre-B being the immediate candidate - is a matter of registering a payment type and its providers rather than a further round of interface changes

3. ILF Sandbox (additional effort beyond the original scope)

We added an ILF Sandbox for demonstration and testing purposes. This was not in the original plan and represents additional effort taken on during this period, but it proved necessary: partners and prospective merchants consistently asked to see the flow before committing, and integrators need a non-production environment to work against. The sandbox demonstrates the complete ILF payment flow and materially eases integration for third parties, streamlining subsequent partner and integration discussions.

4. Colombia: first steps on the Bre-B integration

Bre-B is Colombia's interoperable instant payment system, operated by Banco de la República. Its interoperability and settlement mechanism went live on 23 September 2025, with the system fully opening on 6 October 2025, with 227 participating financial institutions. Users transact through "llaves" - simple aliases that stand in for full account details - and the system runs 24/7. Adoption has been rapid: by mid-2026, the ecosystem had registered well over 100 million keys and around 35 million linked users, processing approximately five million operations per day, and transfers are free to end users until at least 2028.

During this period, we connected to the Bre-B sandbox and manually performed a payment initialization. This validates FLIQA's ability to connect to the rail and gives us a concrete basis for the next stage of work. The immediate next steps are to offer Bre-B as an additional payment tier on the FLIQA Point of Sale, and to integrate it into the FLIQA sandbox environment alongside the ILF Sandbox so that the two rails can be demonstrated and tested side by side.

The strategic point for the Interledger community is that this is not a competing choice. Bre-B is an excellent domestic rail but is not designed for cross-border payments; Interledger addresses the cross-border use case. A merchant checkout that can present both, priced transparently and selected by the payer, is a stronger argument for Open Payments in Latin America than either rail alone.

5. Colombia: regulatory and business-environment assessment

A substantial share of our effort in Months 5–8 went into understanding, in detail, what it would take to operate in Colombia. The findings below shaped both our product decisions and our go-to-market sequencing, and we share them here because we believe they are useful to other Interledger grantees considering the region.

5.1 The supervisory perimeter and licensing

Colombia does not have a single, dedicated "fintech licence". Activities are regulated by what an entity does rather than what it calls itself, and the Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia (SFC) supervises every entity that takes funds from the public. The relevant regulatory structure is:

SEDPE (Sociedad Especializada en Depósitos y Pagos Electrónicos) — the e-money and electronic deposits licence. It permits deposit-taking, electronic deposit accounts, and card issuance, but explicitly prohibits financial intermediation, i.e., lending. Minimum capital is in the order of 2 million USD.
Compañía de financiamiento — an intermediate tier that may both take deposits and lend.
Establecimiento bancario — a full banking licence, with minimum capital in the order of USD 30 million.

Authorisation typically takes over a year. Separately, Decreto 1692 of 2020 governs low-value payment systems and the acquiring activity: it opened acquiring to new entrants, defined the distinct roles in the payment chain, and set governance and access-transparency obligations for payment system administrators and payment service providers. For FLIQA, the significant conclusion is that a properly structured partnership model - operating alongside a licensed local entity rather than seeking our own deposit-taking licence - is not only faster but also the more appropriate regulatory approach for our business model. This is a direct validation of the KAMIN partnership strategy set out in our first report.

5.2 Open Finance: from voluntary to mandatory

The most consequential development of the reporting period is that Colombia moved its Open Finance framework from voluntary to mandatory. Decree 0368, signed on 7 April 2026, establishes a mandatory Sistema de Finanzas Abiertas covering entities supervised by the SFC - credit institutions, SEDPEs, trust companies, brokers, pension fund managers, insurers, and collaborative financing entities. It rests on the principle that the data belongs to the user rather than to the entity holding it, and requires prior, express, informed, and revocable consent, with the receiving entity separately confirming authorisation before it accesses data.

The implementation runway matters for our timing: the SFC has up to six months from the decree to publish technical standards, up to twelve months to launch the participant directory, and obliged entities then have a further twelve months (extendable by six) to enable data access. In other words, the operative APIs land well after our grant period, and any Colombian deployment inside the grant window must be built on today's bilateral and partner-mediated arrangements rather than on the mandatory regime.

Two features of the final decree are directly relevant to us and were not present in the draft. First, payment initiation was structurally separated from the Open Finance framework. Colombia has therefore mandated data sharing but not payment initiation, which leaves initiation to be arranged contractually - and leaves a gap that an interoperable payment standard could help address. Second, the final text dropped the requirement that data recipients also act as data providers and removed the trusted-third-party verification layer, which lowers the barrier to participation for a company in our position. Colombia is behind Brazil on Open Finance maturity but is moving faster than Mexico or Chile, which we read as a favorable window.

5.3 Small community banks and cooperatives

Colombia's community-level financial institutions are structurally distinct from its banks, and this emerged as one of the more important findings of our research. Financial intermediation at the community level is carried out largely by cooperatives, split into two supervisory regimes: cooperativas financieras, which fall under the SFC, and the much larger group of cooperativas de ahorro y crédito, which fall under the Superintendencia de Economía Solidaria. Around 171 such entities operate, with more than 4.2 million members - a gain of over 600,000 in five years - nearly 14,000 employees, and coverage across 23 of the 32 departments. In approximately 40 municipalities, the local cooperative is the only financial intermediary with a physical presence.

Because most of these institutions sit outside the SFC perimeter, they are largely outside the scope of the mandatory Open Finance regime and are slower and less well-resourced to connect to national payment infrastructure. They serve exactly the rural, low-income and Indigenous populations the grant targets, and they have neither the technical capacity nor the regulatory obligation to build interoperability themselves. We regard this as the clearest institutional opportunity for Open Payments in Colombia, and we will develop it further in the remainder of the grant.

5.4 Conditions for micro, small and medium enterprises

MSMEs represent the demand side of our Colombian case. They constitute roughly 98% of the country's business landscape and generate approximately 80% of national employment. Of the more than 300,000 new productive units registered in 2024, over 99% were microenterprises. Yet fewer than 30% of MSMEs access formal credit, according to Bancóldex, and a significant proportion remain at a basic stage of digitalization, according to the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism. Closure rates within the first five years are high, and financing access is a principal cause.

The consequences for payment acceptance are concrete. A microenterprise operating largely in cash, with no formal credit history and limited digital tooling, cannot absorb card-scheme merchant fees, cannot wait days for settlement, and is unlikely to complete a complex onboarding process. An account-to-account payment with transparent pricing, low fees, immediate settlement, and a short onboarding process is not a marginal improvement for this segment - it can determine whether a business can accept digital payments at all. It is also the mechanism by which a business begins to build the transaction record that eventually unlocks credit.

5.5 Conditions for foreign entrants

For a foreign company, Colombia is welcoming from a company-law perspective but demanding from a financial-regulatory perspective. Establishing a local vehicle - most commonly a Sociedad por Acciones Simplificada, or a branch of the foreign parent - is relatively straightforward and can be completed quickly, and foreign capital may hold full ownership. The friction lies elsewhere: foreign investment must be registered with Banco de la República under the exchange-control regime, and payment flows are subject to foreign-exchange reporting obligations that a payments business must design for from the outset rather than retrofit. Beyond the formalities, the main constraints remain those we identified in our first report and which this period's research confirmed: the SFC authorization timeline, the depth of incumbent relationships in merchant acquiring, and the practical impossibility of building institutional trust from outside the market at the speed a grant timeline requires. All of this continues to point to the partner-led entry model we have adopted.

6. UAE and Pay10 — status

Our first report scheduled the integration of Pay10's APIs for Month 8. That work has not proceeded. The geopolitical conditions in the region that we flagged in May have not eased, and rather than commit engineering resources to an integration whose commercial counterpart we cannot yet schedule with confidence, we held the UAE workstream at low intensity and redirected that capacity to Colombia and to the platform work described above. We want to be transparent with the Foundation that this is a real deviation from the month-by-month plan in our first report, not a reframing of it. Our assessment is that the platform work delivered instead — the payment dialog, the payment-type architecture, the sandbox — is rail-agnostic and directly reusable when the UAE integration does proceed, so the deviation delays rather than eliminates the value of this work.

Communications and Marketing

FLIQA continues to grow primarily through direct conversation - networking events and direct engagement with partners, merchants, and industry stakeholders - while becoming more intentional about sharing our work publicly through LinkedIn posts, website updates, and other content focused on open banking, digital payments, and financial innovation. Our journey is documented on LinkedIn and on our website, in both English and Slovenian.

We continued to use LinkedIn as our primary public communications channel, publishing content around open banking, Pay-by-Bank, payment interoperability, digital payments, and the broader development of the European payments ecosystem. These posts helped us communicate the project's progress beyond direct partner conversations and create a public record of our work. link

We also use Instagram to communicate topics related to open banking, digital payments and payment infrastructure through visual and accessible content, with the aim of making concepts that can be technically complex easier to understand. On LinkedIn, we similarly aim to make discussions around payment protocols, interoperability and financial innovation accessible to a broader audience, rather than communicating only to people with a technical or financial background.

Our public communication is complemented by direct conversations with partners, merchants and other industry stakeholders. These conversations help us understand which aspects of Open Payments and Interledger require further explanation and inform how we communicate the technology and its practical benefits more clearly.

Where relevant, we also used events and industry networking to communicate FLIQA's work and establish conversations with potential partners in the markets we are exploring. link

The ILF Sandbox added in this period also serves a communications purpose: it gives us something concrete to show rather than simply describe when we introduce Open Payments to a prospective partner, which has already changed the character of those conversations.

Taken together, these activities have allowed us to combine direct partner engagement with a more consistent public presence, while using the product and sandbox itself as practical communication and demonstration tools.

What's Next?

The remainder of the grant period is where the work moves from platform capability to deployment and validation in Colombia.

Bre-B as a payment tier on the FLIQA Point of Sale. Building on the successful sandbox initialization, we will expose Bre-B as an additional payment tier at the point of sale, alongside open banking and ILF payments.
Bre-B in the FLIQA sandbox environment. Integrating Bre-B into our sandbox so that merchants and integrators can test the domestic instant rail and the Interledger rail in the same environment.
KAMIN API integration to gain access to local payment rails and expand our merchant reach in Colombia.
Completing the GateHub integration, including automated payment pointer acquisition and sandbox/test wallet configuration.
Colombian pilot with our first merchants, validating the end-to-end flow in a live environment. This remains the central deliverable of the grant.
ILF and Open Payments visibility on the FLIQA website and tenant portal.

In the UAE, our position is that we will resume the Pay10 integration when regional conditions allow, but not within this grant window. We would rather deliver one credible pilot in Colombia than two incomplete ones.

Community Support

Our ask from the first report stands and has become more specific. We are looking for an introduction to a Colombian merchant - or to someone who can introduce us to one - willing to take part in the testing phase of our product. We need a partner who can help us verify the integration workflow, the payment flow, and the overall merchant experience in a real environment before we expand the rollout.

Two further asks have emerged from this period's work:

Contact with Colombian savings-and-credit cooperatives or community financial institutions, or with the bodies that represent them. As set out above, these institutions serve the populations this grant targets, sit outside the mandatory Open Finance perimeter, and lack the capacity to build interoperability alone. If anyone in the Interledger community has a relationship in Colombia's cooperative financial sector, an introduction would be genuinely valuable.
Experience of running Open Payments alongside a domestic instant payment rail. We are about to present Interledger and Bre-B as parallel options in the same checkout. If another grantee has done something comparable - with Pix, UPI, SPEI or similar - we would welcome a conversation about what worked, particularly on how the choice was presented to the payer and how fees were communicated.

Additional Comments

One observation from this period may be useful to the Foundation more broadly. Colombia has just mandated open data sharing while deliberately leaving payment initiation outside that mandate. The country has simultaneously built a fast, free, high-adoption domestic instant rail in Bre-B. The combination creates an unusual opening: there is a regulated appetite for interoperability, a proven public willingness to adopt new payment rails, and no mandated standard for initiation — which is precisely the space Open Payments is designed to occupy. We therefore see Colombia as one of the more favourable jurisdictions for Interledger adoption in Latin America over the next two years, and we would be glad to share our regulatory research with other grantees working in the region.

Relevant Links / Resources

Sources for the Colombian regulatory assessment
Decreto 0368 of 7 April 2026 (mandatory Open Finance System) — https://dapre.presidencia.gov.co/normativa/normativa/DECRETO%20No.%200368%20DEL%2007%20DE%20ABRIL%20DE%202026.pdf
Brigard Urrutia — Colombia launches its mandatory Open Finance system — https://www.bu.com.co/en/insights/noticias/colombia-launches-its-mandatory-open-finance-system
URF — Colombia consolida el Sistema de Finanzas Abiertas obligatorio — https://www.urf.gov.co/w/colombia-consolida-el-sistema-de-finanzas-abiertas-obligatorio
Banco de la República — Bre-B interoperability launch — https://www.banrep.gov.co/en/news/bre-b-continues-progress
Banco de la República — Working paper on Bre-B design, implementation and outlook — https://www.banrep.gov.co/en/publications-research/working-papers/paper-bre-b-february-2026
Banco de la República — Panorama of savings and credit cooperatives — https://www.banrep.gov.co/es/publicaciones-investigaciones/reporte-estabilidad-financiera/recuadro-2-primer-semestre-2024
Superintendencia Financiera de Colombia — SEDPE information — https://www.superfinanciera.gov.co/publicaciones/10101317/informes-y-cifrascifrassociedades-especializadas-en-depositos-y-pagos-electronicos-sedpe-10101317/
Decreto 1692 de 2020 — low-value payment systems and acquiring — https://www.funcionpublica.gov.co/eva/gestornormativo/norma.php?i=153787
Supersolidaria — Cooperativas de ahorro y crédito — https://www.supersolidaria.gov.co/es/entidad/cooperativas-de-ahorro-y-credito
OECD — Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2026: Colombia — https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/financing-smes-and-entrepreneurs-2026_075d8058-en/full-report/colombia_00b286cf.html
Facephi Observatory — Open Finance Colombia 2026 — https://facephi.com/observatory/en/open-finance-colombia-2026-the-mandatory-path-toward-financial-inclusion/

Bridgy Fed — ILF Grant Final Report

Ryan — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 18:41:32 +0000

Image/Banner

Brief Project Description

Bridgy Fed is an infrastructure service that bridges ActivityPub, ATProto, and the web. The project was to bridge Web Monetization over Bridgy Fed so users on one side of the ecosystem could handle payments from the other.

Project Update

We're done! We finished before publishing our interim report last year, so the status and result are the same as there. From that report:

Over the last few months, we've completed our deliverables. We had two main goals:

Introduce a Web Monetization Lexicon for the ATmosphere (ATProto ecosystem standard)

We partnered with the Lexicon Community to develop the ATProto standard, and the finalized shared lexicon is documented here.

Bridge Web Monetization between ActivityPub and ATProto

The Bridgy Fed integration can be found here.

Project Impact & Target Audience(s)

From our interim report:

Our target audience is ActivityPub instance owners and ATProto platform developers who wish to include payments via the Web Monetization standard. Users or platform admins can bridge accounts over Bridgy Fed and expect platforms in the other ecosystem who also support Web Monetization to handle payments as if they were native.

On the ATProto side, we've already seen the at://work professional social platform adopt the new Web Monetization lexicon we helped standardize. We're hoping to see more developers in either ecosystem take advantage of this new functionality.

Progress on Objectives, Key Activities

We're done!

Communications and Marketing

We've been promoting this at conferences and in discussions with our various partners. This led to the at://work integration, along with some ActivityPub developers who have started working on Web Monetization integration. We'll hopefully have more platforms to share soon.

What’s Next?

We'll continue evangelizing this integration wherever we can and will be testing with developers who adopt it.

Community Support

We'd love to chat with other developers who are already integrating Web Monetization so we can test across ecosystems. Our goal is to have as many cross-network demos as possible to share with our users.

We're also a non-profit run by two full-time volunteers and three volunteer board of directors. Any donations to our Patreon or merch purchases would help sustain this project.

Reflections from UN Open Source Week 2026

Vineel R. Pindi — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 14:31:00 +0000

Nearly twenty years ago, I joined the open source movement as a student volunteer. Back then, I knew it mostly through the open web community: people from different countries and backgrounds working together on an open web browser. People could help shape something they used.

If you’d told me back then that open source would become a priority for governments and major organisations, with these conversations taking place at the United Nations, I wouldn’t have believed it.

In June 2026, I represented the Interledger Foundation at UN Open Source Week in New York, alongside Chris Lawrence, our Chief Programs Officer. We met people working in government, universities and open source communities, including several of our partners. The discussions covered public services and payment systems that people depend on.

From left to right: David Higgings, Ed Cable, Chris Lawrence, Vineel Reddy

The question that stayed with me through the week was:
As governments and institutions adopt open source, how do we make sure the communities behind it have a say in the decisions?

DPI Day - Digital Public Infrastructure is about people

One of the sessions that resonated with me was “Building Inclusion: Identity, Payments, and the Real Cost of Digital Public Infrastructure” during DPI Day.

The discussion went beyond building digital identity and payment systems to whether people could use and trust them.
Chris and I reconnected with Jayshree Venkatesan, Senior Vice President and Head of Partnership Development at Accion and met Andrea Duarte, Advisor, Payment Systems Department, Central Bank of Colombia. We spoke about the work the Interledger Foundation is supporting in Colombia around digital payments, inclusion, and how open technologies can better support national priorities.

Lunch with the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) community

For more than a year, the Interledger Foundation team has been speaking with the DPGA community about how Rafiki, our open-source payment software, could contribute to digital public goods. Lunch gave us a chance to continue those conversations in person.

Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) for Good

Governments, UN agencies and universities discussed how open source program offices could help them organise their open source work. It was good to hear conversations about contributing to projects and supporting their upkeep.

Community is the constant

My favourite part of the week was Friday’s community sessions, organised by RISE, OpenForum Europe, CURIOSS, and Red Hat at the IBM office. IBM had announced its new chip technology just the day before. I found that fascinating.

Ed Cable, CEO of Mifos Initiative, joined a session on how countries can build public digital systems that they can control and that work with other systems. The discussion covered how institutions choose technology and how communities contribute to it. These decisions affect whether local teams can adapt and maintain the systems they use.

Ed Cable, CEO of Mifos Initiative

Friday’s sessions reminded me of the unconference events I attended years ago, where people discussed their work openly and learned from each other. That is what drew me to the community in the first place.

What this means for Interledger Foundation
At Interledger, we support open standards like Open Payments, open source projects such as Rafiki, and community-led initiatives around the world. The conversations during the week were closely connected to this work, including our discussions about payments in Colombia and Rafiki with the DPGA community.

I think we need to keep asking how the communities we support are involved in decisions about the work. What are we learning from them, and how does that influence the support we provide?

Alabama A&M: Shaping the Future of FinTech

Jha'Mhyrin Johnson — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:48:08 +0000

Selected for the Dollarcraft Program, our initial cohort of 12 business scholars has entered an intensive 12-week interdisciplinary incubator. We are spending these early weeks bridging business strategy and the mechanics of the Interledger Protocol (ILP). In Week 3, four computer science and engineering students will join our group, merging technical execution with strategic design to build functional prototypes to be presented at our final hackathon.

Weeks 1 & 2: From Core Concepts to Methodical Research. Entering the program, open payment rails were uncharted territory for most of our cohort. The trajectory shifted quickly when we hosted Bibi Souza, Interledger’s Community Lead. Bibi delivered a masterclass on ILP’s architecture, demystifying cross-network settlement and grounding us in Interledger's broader mission of universal financial access. Her session transformed abstract payment theory into a clear operational roadmap for our group.

Building on that momentum, Week 2 pushed us deep into discovery. Before writing code or finalizing product specs, we focused on rigorous data collection models. We established quantitative and qualitative research tools—mapping methodologies for user surveys, structured one-on-one interviews, focus groups, and observational field tests. Grounding our decision-making in empirical user data ensures that the financial solutions we build address genuine, documented friction points.

Moving forward, the energy across these first two weeks has set a high standard for what is to come. As our engineering teammates join us next week, we transition from strategic research to full-stack execution. The opportunity to build on open payment standards isn't just an academic exercise; it's a chance to influence how value moves across communities for years to come. We are heading into Week 3 focused, prepared, and ready to build tools that reflect the true potential of this technology.

Coauthor: Jayveun Williams

Open Payments Curriculum: Empowering a New Generation of Fintech Entrepreneurs — ILF Grant Progress Report

Jonathan Oluranti — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 19:17:00 +0000

Brief Project Description

The Interledger Foundation NextGen Program at Covenant University is an innovative educational initiative designed to equip students with the knowledge, skills, and practical experience needed to build the next generation of inclusive digital financial systems. It aims to achieve this by integrating Interledger Protocol (ILP), Web Monetization, and open payments technologies into computing and business programs.

The initiative introduces two new courses covering open payments, financial interoperability, fintech innovation, and entrepreneurship, supported by teaching and practical sessions as well as capstone projects. Students will gain hands-on experience by developing ILP-based applications, fintech prototypes, and interoperable payment solutions. Experiential learning activities include innovation bootcamps, hackathons, developer workshops, mentorship programs, and expert-led webinars.

The project aligns with the Interledger Foundation’s mission of advancing open, interoperable financial systems and promoting digital inclusion across Africa. Ultimately, it seeks to nurture a new generation of fintech entrepreneurs capable of driving financial innovation and expanding adoption of open payment technologies.

Project Update

The Interledger NextGen program at Covenant University has made significant progress since its commencement in March, 2026.

Curriculum Design, Development and Launch of Two Dedicated Open Payments Courses
We successfully designed, developed and launched two university-level Open Payments courses focusing on Open Payments, the Interledger Protocol (ILP), Web Monetization, and Financial Inclusion. The curriculum comprises four modules and sixty learning units, which we plan to integrate into Computing and Business programs. The period under review (March – August) has witnessed the focused application of the developed curriculum for hands-on training in open-payment technologies thereby preparing students for careers in open-source fintech, interoperable payment design, and digital financial inclusion.

Student Engagement and Capacity Building
As regards students’ engagement and capacity building, we initially had about 253 students who indicated interest to participate in the program when the first advert went out. However, 35 students from Computer Science, Information Systems, Accounting, Economics, and Entrepreneurship programs eventually made it and are actively participating in all aspects of the training.

The interest shown by the students actually exceeded expectations which lead to the formation of interdisciplinary innovation teams focused on solving local financial inclusion challenges.

Open Payment Innovation Week and Demo Day Event
Some major activities held within the period under review were the Open Payments Innovation Week and Demo. The open payments innovation week was dedicated entirely to problem solving, building and prototyping. Students were divided into in teams to build payment solutions utilizing the Interledger Protocol and Rafiki. The demo day presented opportunity for the students to present as well as pitch their ideas following the week-long training them. We had judges from the industry while Bibi represented Interledger team. The feedbacks received were quite instructive and have helped the teams to improve on their initial idea.

Activation of Micro Grants for Student-Driven ILP Projects
In late July, we activated the micro grants to provide financial support to the six teams who pitched their project ideas on the demo day in order to achieve student driven ILPL projects. We are glad to report that five of the teams have completed functional prototypes of their solutions using the ILP and have deployed them accordingly. The next phase will be the real-life demonstration of these solutions with actual intended users. Here are the links to the prototypes:

https://paylance-gmc1.onrender.com/
https://payzati.vercel.app/
http://seamlyy.vercel.app
https://rheodemymvp.vercel.app/
https://nexafund.vercel.app/

Our website for the entire program is nearing completion and will accommodate the complete course material, video recordings of various sessions and presentation slides.

Project Impact & Target Audience(s)

Objective i: Design, Launch and Institutionalize an Interdisciplinary Open Payments Curriculum

Significant progress has been made toward the development and institutionalization of the Open Payments Curriculum. Curriculum design activities were completed through consultations with faculty members from Computer Science, Information Systems, Finance, and Entrepreneurship disciplines. Two interdisciplinary course modules—Foundations of Open Payments and Financial Interoperability and Fintech Innovation and Open Payment Entrepreneurship—were developed and aligned with Covenant University's academic standards.

Objective ii: Technical Capacity & Infrastructure Development for 35 Participants
We recruited students and developers to participate the in the technical capacity-building activities that successfully commenced early April. A total of 35 participants were selected through a competitive application process. Foundational training sessions have been delivered, providing students with practical exposure to Open Payments technologies and the Interledger ecosystem.

Objective iii: Establish a Certification Program on Open Payments with at Least 80% Participant Completion Rate
The certification framework has been developed and integrated into the training program. Assessment instruments and competency evaluation criteria have been established to measure participant understanding and practical skills. Participants are progressing through the certification pathway, with completion rates currently tracking toward the targeted 80% benchmark.

Objective iv: Produce Five Pilot Projects
We successfully divided the students into seven (7) teams that comprised of a mix of science, engineering and business students. The teams have since commenced the ideation and development of pilot projects addressing real-world payment interoperability and digital inclusion challenges. At least four of the seven teams have completed their projects and deployed them. The other teams are not relenting also.

Objective v: Publish Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Policy Briefs
Development of openly accessible educational resources is underway. Initial teaching materials, practical guides, and workshop contents are being compiled for publication. Research work has also begun on policy briefs that highlight the role of interoperable payment systems in advancing digital inclusion and fintech innovation in Nigeria and Africa.

Communications and Marketing

Since the launch of the Interledger Next Gen Program at Covenant University, we have actively shared project activities, milestones, and learning outcomes through multiple public channels to increase awareness of Open Payments, the Interledger Protocol (ILP), and fintech innovation among students, educators, and the broader technology community. Our public engagement efforts have included:

• Publication of project updates and announcements through Covenant University communication channels and social media platforms.
• Presentations and information sessions introducing the Interledger ecosystem, Open Payments, Web Monetization, and financial interoperability concepts to students and community innovators.

Use of Marketing and Outreach Funds
In respect of the marketing funds included in the project budget, they were utilized to support participant recruitment exercise, awareness creation, and community engagement activities. Expenditures included:
• Design and production of digital promotional materials (flyers, banners, social media graphics, and event announcements).
• Event branding materials used during training sessions and outreach activities.
• Documentation and dissemination of project outcomes through digital media channels.
• Production of communication materials highlighting participant achievements and project impact. Here is the link to most recent one carried out:

https://1drv.ms/v/c/21d49bd80eaff14c/IQAYYxBNTe_zQLQBeOuTXSv3AUiMEhVndRC5VR9T4Jhw368?e=OSOqUj

These outreach efforts have contributed to increased visibility of the Interledger ecosystem within the university community, expanded participation in project activities, and strengthened awareness of Open Payments technologies among students, educators, and aspiring fintech entrepreneurs.

What’s Next?

Hackathons and Student Innovation
In next half of this project, we plan hosting a campus-wide Open Payments Hackathon that will attract more than 20 student teams. The Hackathon will cover the following solutions:
• Cross-border student payment systems.
• Scholarship and bursary disbursement platforms.
• Digital marketplaces leveraging Web Monetization.
• Micro-savings solutions for underserved communities.

We will ensure that successful projects advance to the incubation stage for further development towards making them market ready fintech startups.

First ever Open Payments Conference in Nigeria
In November this year, we plan hosting an Open Payments Conference, the first ever in Nigeria and possibly West Africa. This will bring together thought leaders, students, researchers, fintech professionals, and policymakers to discuss the future of open and inclusive financial systems.

Improved Public Dissemination and Community Engagement
We plan to improve on our public dissemination and community engagement activities by actively sharing project activities, milestones, and learning outcomes through multiple public channels to increase awareness of Open Payments, the Interledger Protocol (ILP), and fintech innovation among students, educators, and the broader technology community.

Our public engagement plans include:
• Publication of project updates and announcements through Covenant University communication channels and social media platforms.
• Presentations and information sessions introducing the Interledger ecosystem, Open Payments, Web Monetization, and financial interoperability concepts to students and community innovators.

Finalize the development of Openly Accessible Educational Resource
We also plan to finalize the development of openly accessible educational resources. We shall conclude the compilation of all teaching materials, practical guides, and workshop contents for publication. We also endeavor to conclude the ongoing research work on policy briefs that highlight the role of interoperable payment systems in advancing digital inclusion and fintech innovation in Nigeria and Africa.

Community Support

Public Relations Rollout across Nigeria, Africa and Global Media Channels
We aim to execute a strategic public relations campaign targeting top-tier media outlets across Nigeria and Africa. This will involve distributing tailored press releases, securing feature stories, and arranging interviews with key digital, and broadcast networks where necessary. We desire all forms of support from the ILF Marketing team in terms of deciding on the timeline and PR messaging. We are looking forward to ILF support by way of introduction to PR expert in South Africa.

Covenant University Next Gen Hackathon
During this Hackathon week by second week of November, we would be having technical and product office hour sessions to support students and the wider builder's community on campus to integrate Open Payments and Web Monetization. We would great appreciate the involvement of the engineering executive from the ILF. We desire 2 or 3 judges from the ILF team or community to evaluate our students’ projects

Open Payments Conference and Hackathon Finale
The Open Payments Conference combines a high impact tech conference with the thrilling conclusion of the Covenant University Next Gen Hackathon. Industry leaders, developers, and Next Gen students will gather for expert keynotes and deep dives into Open Payments, financial inclusion and financial interoperability.

The conference culminates in the hackathon finale, where top teams will pitch their innovative open payment solutions to a panel of judges. We would be glad to have 2 or 3 speakers from Interledger Foundation for Keynote and Spotlight Sessions in the Conference.

Open Payments Conference (Marketing and Branding)
We would like to have the support of the ILF teams with respect to the Marketing and Branding aspects of our forthcoming Open payments conference in November. We would like to sync appropriately with the Marketing team from ILF on Marketing efforts for the Open Payments Conference. This will include:
• Design and Branding of Conference Materials (Stickers, Merch, Swag items)
• Marketing support, timeline and alignment with the ILF Marketing team

Community Share-out Sessions
We also require the support of ILF team for a 5 - 10 minutes monthly slot starting from September on the Interledger Community Call for our students to conduct live product demonstrations to the Interledger Community, highlighting their product innovation and technical progress. This will serve as a platform for students to engage with industry experts, exchange ideas, and receive valuable, constructive feedback to further refine and advance their projects.

Final Public Demo Day
The Public Demo Day is a capstone event that marks the culmination of the Inaugural Covenant University Next Gen program, where participating students will showcase their completed open payments projects and innovative solutions to a wider audience especially industry experts, peers and the public. We desire at least two persons from the ILF team for this great event.

Additional Comments

Relevant Links/Resources (optional)

https://1drv.ms/v/c/21d49bd80eaff14c/IQAYYxBNTe_zQLQBeOuTXSv3AUiMEhVndRC5VR9T4Jhw368?e=OSOqUj

Interledger Community Call: Hague University - Open Payments Innovation Lab | 8 July 2026

Vineel R. Pindi — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 13:04:42 +0000

Join us for our May Interledger Community Call on 8 July 2026!

The Interledger community calls shall be once a month, on the second Wednesday of each month.

Deeper Look: Hague University - Open Payments Innovation Lab

For July’s community call, we will have the Hague University - Open Payments Innovation Lab team sharing a deeper look into their programme.

About Hague University - Open Payments Innovation Lab:

The Hague University of Applied Sciences is taking a clear step towards future-oriented education at the intersection of finance, technology and regulation. The Open Payments Innovation Lab, which was launched in March 2026, combines teaching and research in an interdisciplinary programme. Students work there on current issues in relation to open payment systems and financial inclusion.

The Open Payments Innovation Lab consists of a twelve-week programme and awards students five credits for additional circular activities. After eight weeks of workshops and three weeks of coaching, the programme concludes with a pitching event. Students work in interdisciplinary teams on real-world case studies exploring how open payment technologies can promote digital financial inclusion. That combination of disciplines is essential, emphasises lecturer, researcher and lab coordinator Aleksandra Asscheman: ‘It is important that students not only know the rules, but also understand how the technology works. They must speak both languages’.

Future of Open Payments: Bridging Finance, Technology, and Law for Financial Inclusion — ILF Grant Progress Report

Aleksandra Asscheman
Aleksandra Asscheman

Aleksandra Asscheman

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for The Hague University of Applied Sciences
Mar 12

Future of Open Payments: Bridging Finance, Technology, and Law for Financial Inclusion — ILF Grant Progress Report

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7 min read

Local Impact Mini-Grant:

Meet the Local Impact Mini-Grant Pilot Grantees
Announcing the Local Impact Mini-Grant

What is the Interledger Local Impact Mini-Grant?

The most effective financial inclusion work often happens within a single neighborhood, a village cooperative, or a local market. The Interledger Foundation's Local Impact Mini-Grants put funding directly into the hands of the people doing that work.

The grants are designed to support local community groups and individual leaders running initiatives that work to expand digital financial access from the inside out. If you understand your community's barriers firsthand, this program is built for you.

Grants range from $500 to $3,000 USD. Applications open July 6, 2026, with rolling review through November 11, 2026.

Community Call Time:

Agenda and Meeting Minutes:

Public note-taking document here.

Meeting joining info:

Community call meeting joining info

Have questions or need help? Join us on Slack here.

From an idea to the Sandbox: What It Really Takes to Build Fintech in the Pacific, Part 1

Alexendra Naisara Grey — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 21:23:30 +0000

Fiji's Reserve Bank has a National Financial Inclusion Strategy that they are working through until 2030. Within that strategy, children and youths have been identified as part of our underserved population when it comes to access to Digital Financial Services. When I first walked into RBF for pre-consultations, I walked in with just a newly registered business and an idea about how I could help bring our children and youths into the digital economy. What I did not anticipate was that just a few months later, I would have a designated space once a week in our Central Bank's building, and access to the regulators themselves, while I work on what was once just an idea.

I'm writing this from inside the RBF's first ever Innovation Activator, and I want to share what I am learning as I build Fiji's first ever regulated digital financial service built specifically for our children and youths.

Velo's flagship product is its Family Card Programme, otherwise known as the Velo Kaji — which translates to "little" or "small" in Vosa Vaka Viti. It is a prepaid card for children aged 6 to 17, and sitting alongside this card is an app where children have actual oversight of their money - where they are able to learn to save, budget and spend responsibly. But this solution goes beyond the pre-paid card; within the app, we have embedded a gamified version of the financial literacy curriculum that was put together by Reserve Bank's National Financial Inclusion Taskforce. Aside from the gamification piece, we are working on translating the curriculum into Fiji's two other main languages - Vosa Vaka Viti and Fiji-Hindi, because we want to make sure that all our kids have access to this tool.

Why have I decided to create something that speaks to a generation that has not even entered the workforce? It's pretty simple to me. When we talk about creating access for the underserved and the underbanked, we often automatically think of the adults in informal or rural areas. Steps are always being taken to educate the adults, the MSMEs - while completely glossing over the incoming generation. I believe that if we can build good and practical financial habits and tools for our kids, these habits will naturally follow them into adulthood. We are creating a generation that is already well-equipped and participating in our fast growing digital economy. They are no longer an afterthought.

This is my journey through the Activator Programme to the Sandbox, and the roads that are leading Velo on its mission to uplift a whole generation and possibly change the trajectory of a nation. Follow me for more :)