The Interledger Community 🌱: Interledger Foundation

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.

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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?

Web Monetization updates May to June 2026

Tseli — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 16:02:58 +0000

Welcome back to the Web Monetization station! We have plenty to share this month.

Building more avenues for publishers to earn online has always been at the heart of Web Monetization. Every new feature or tool we ship is another step towards bringing that future to life.

We already offer a suite of tools that help get anyone started with Web Monetization. In May and June, we took that mission further by building for publishers who are not yet web monetized. Now publishers can offer exclusive content behind a seamless paywall powered by Open Payments.

To support the growth of our publisher tools, we’ve updated them to deliver anonymous, data-driven insights about user behaviour. All without sacrificing privacy.

Beyond our own features, we close out with a broader community update from a hackathon where students built an app using Web Monetization for a pay-as-you-use model for gym membership.

Let’s get into it.

A new tool for publishers
There's huge variety in what gets published on the Internet. But, publishers need more ways to earn or receive support from anywhere in the world.

Enter the new Pay Per Article tool that makes it simple for a publisher to control access to exclusive content by adding a paywall to a web page. A supporter pays once, using their Open Payments-enabled wallet to unlock exclusive content permanently. On return visits, their wallet address automatically unlocks the wall. It’s like “pay once and access over, and over, and over…”

Data-driven analytics
The publisher tools can now collect anonymized usage data, in a privacy-preserving way, for analytics based on real-world behaviours. We can now easily see metrics such as the most or least frequently used features, and observe exactly how people use the tools. From this data we can see what users find most useful and make decisions about how to evolve old and new features.

More on the tools
If this is a race then the publisher tools are keeping the pace with improvements and bug fixes:

Preview – the checkbox enables or disables a live preview of the banner, as expected.
Widget & Paywall – wallet ownership checks are now compatible with different wallets on different versions of Rafiki.
Widget – the codebase has become easier to reuse and maintain, and includes clearer error messages when the paying wallet is incompatible with the receiving wallet.

Browser extension
Some bugs are interesting because they require a little more imagination to trigger. One example was ensuring that the browser extension can handle connecting when one wallet has many addresses. Because that behaviour is controlled by the wallet provider, the extension had to remain flexible enough to handle how the providers surface wallet addresses.

Community contributions from students
There’s nothing quite like seeing the time pressure of a hackathon meet with student creativity (and AI) to uncover an interesting Web Monetization use-case. A case in point was Pavel_Payments, a usage-based micropayment platform for gym members to pay only for time spent at the gym, and not a second longer. A group of students called Pavel_7 recently presented this at the 2026 UCT Open Payments hackathon. More about the hackathon soon.

Wallet providers
Chimoney announced in May that the wallet would no longer accept or process transactions, from April 30th, 2026.
To reflect this change we’ve updated the browser extension and publisher tools to remove Chimoney wallet support. As the Open Payments ecosystem grows and matures, we're eager to welcome more compatible wallets.

Join the next Web Monetization Community Call on July 23rd at 1:00 PM UTC. Check your timezone here.

Join the meeting: https://meet.google.com/fjy-vjef-ogj
View the meeting agenda

See you next time!

Rafiki Updates - July 2026

Max Kurapov — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:57:23 +0000

Hello everyone!

v2.4.1-beta release

This month has brought us the Rafiki release v2.4.1-beta, with a few key features:

A redesign & polish of our Admin UI for the consistency of the user experience (as well as a developer experience), courtesy of our front-end specialist @JonathanMatthey
Improved error handling for cross-currency quotes and payments courtesy of our newest Rafiki team member, @takundachirema
Soft deleting expired incoming payments without funds
Improvement to the cancelIncomingPayment Admin API, which allows integrators to share a reason for why the incoming payment was cancelled. This feature was added by our community member, @Freedisch, thank you!

Rafiki & Cards Work Week

Next week (July 13th–17th), the Rafiki and Card teams are heading to Germany for an in-person sprint. We are anticipating a productive week of work, focusing on advancing the progress of the new Rafiki v2 architecture (including several additions to simplify the integration process for ASEs), adding merchant & issuer cards functionality, as well as expanding our documentation.

As always, please keep an eye out for an Engineering Blog post next month going over what we worked on in detail!

Enjoy July, and see you in August :)

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

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

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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.

PCH Mexico | Interledger Community Call Summary | 10 June 2026

Vineel R. Pindi — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 18:48:39 +0000

Here is a recap of our 10th June 2026 Interledger Community Call, including a summary of the meeting and links to the recordings.

Notes, Recording and Podcast

Watch Meeting recording on YouTube.
Listen to the Podcast for free on YouTube here.
Public note-taking document here

Deeper Look: People's Clearinghouse (PCH) Mexico

For June’s community call, we had the People's Clearinghouse (PCH) team sharing a deeper look into their project.

About People's Clearinghouse (PCH):
People's Clearinghouse (PCH) is a digital payments platform designed to interconnect community banks and savings cooperatives in Mexico, among themselves, with the national financial system, and with international networks for account-deposited remittances. Built on the basis of open-source technology (Rafiki, Mojaloop, ILP), PCH is led by the Mexican Association of Social Sector Credit Unions (AMUCSS), an organization with four decades of experience building community-owned financial institutions in rural and indigenous regions. By routing remittances directly into community bank accounts rather than into cash, PCH aims to create a virtuous cycle: more local capital, more credit for productive projects, less inequality, and less forced migration.

People's Clearinghouse — ILF Grant Final Report

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People's Clearinghouse — ILF Grant Final Report

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Open Payments Month and Open Payments Accelerator:

Open Payments Month (June 1 - June 30)

What is Open Payments Learning Month?

Thirty days of hands-on, self-paced learning to take you from knowing that Open Payments exists to running your first transaction running in the test environment. The program includes live talks and sessions throughout the month. The time commitment is flexible, though we recommend a minimum of 6 to 10 hours total over the course of the month. It’s completely free and starts on June 1.

Open Payments Accelerator Launch The Open Payments Accelerator grant program supports early-stage founders and developers building digital financial services for underserved communities, helping them move from idea to Proof of Concept (PoC) through 4 months of intense mentorship and funding.

Our goal is to lower barriers for innovators, grow a pipeline of Interledger-enabled solutions, and bring more people into accessible, interoperable financial systems.

Timeline: Applications opens on Monday, June 1, 2026 and closes on Tuesday, June 30, 2026 (11:59 PM EDT)

Reminders:

Sign up for the ILF newsletter by joining our mailing list
Have questions or need help? Join us on Slack here.
Contribute to the Interledger project on GitHub and give it a ⭐

Applications Are Now Open for the 2026 Open Payments Accelerator Program

Julaire Hall — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:50:47 +0000

On June 1, the Interledger Foundation officially launched the Open Payments Accelerator, a new four-month program designed to help builders turn promising ideas into working proofs-of-concept that advance interoperable payments.

Since the launch, we've been excited to see interest from developers, founders, startups, nonprofits, and innovators exploring how Open Payments and Interledger technologies can help create more connected payment experiences. As applications continue to come in, we wanted to take a moment to highlight what makes this opportunity unique and encourage prospective applicants to start preparing their submissions.

Why Open Payments?

Despite significant advances in digital payments, many payment systems still operate in isolation. Moving money across platforms, providers, and networks often requires complex integrations, proprietary solutions, and unnecessary friction for both businesses and users.

_Open Payments offers a different approach.
_
By enabling interoperable payments through open standards, Open Payments creates new opportunities for developers and organizations to build experiences that work across systems rather than being limited to a single network or provider. The result is a more connected ecosystem where innovation can happen faster and where value can move more freely.

The Open Payments Accelerator is designed to help teams explore these possibilities through practical exploration and validation.

Learn About Open Payments During Open Payments Learning Month

For those who are new to Open Payments or want to deepen their understanding before applying, the Interledger Foundation is also hosting Open Payments Learning Month throughout June. The initiative offers multiple opportunities to learn about Open Payments and the broader Interledger ecosystem, including:

Self-paced learning resources and educational content.
Community calls and discussions.
Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions with Interledger Foundation representatives and ecosystem experts.
Opportunities to connect with fellow builders and community members.
Additional activities designed to help participants better understand Open Payments technologies, use cases, and implementation approaches.

Whether you're considering an application to the Accelerator or simply want to learn more about interoperable payments, Open Payments Learning Month is a great place to start, sign up now.

Building the Open Payments Ecosystem Together

The Open Payments Accelerator is more than a development program. It is an investment in the builders helping shape the future of interoperable payments. By supporting early-stage innovation, the program aims to strengthen the broader Open Payments ecosystem, encourage experimentation with open standards, and create new pathways for collaboration across the Interledger community.

Whether you're creating a merchant payment solution, experimenting with cross-platform payment experiences, developing ecosystem tooling, or exploring entirely new applications for interoperable payments, the Accelerator is an opportunity to test and refine your ideas with support from experienced mentors and peers.

What Participants Will Receive
Selected teams will join a small cohort of builders working on real-world applications of Open Payments technologies. Over the course of four months, participants will:

Develop and validate a proof of concept.
Receive technical mentorship from experts within the Interledger ecosystem.
Gain hands-on experience with Open Payments, Rafiki, and related technologies.
Access funding to support project development.
Participate in structured workshops, mentorship sessions, and peer learning opportunities.
Present their work during a Virtual Demo Day at the conclusion of the program.

The program is intentionally designed for early-stage projects. Applicants do not need a fully developed product or company to participate. Instead, we are looking for teams with strong ideas, technical capability, and a clear vision for how interoperability can solve meaningful challenges.

Who Should Apply?
We encourage applications from:

Developers and software engineers.
Startup founders and entrepreneurs.
Open-source contributors.
Nonprofit and mission-driven organizations.
Researchers and technical innovators.
Teams building payment applications, infrastructure, developer tools, integrations, or new Open Payments use cases.

We are excited to see the ideas, projects, and teams that emerge from this inaugural cohort.

Applications are currently open and will close on June 30, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. EDT. Please review our Program Resource Kit for application guidance, templates, and key information to help you prepare a strong submission.

If you're interested in building the next generation of interoperable payment solutions, now is the time to apply.

Highlights from our Grantee Community: Quarterly Roundup!

Ayesha Ware — Fri, 22 May 2026 19:34:56 +0000

Your Quarterly Grantee Roundup is here! Learn how we are working together to construct a more inclusive and equitable digital financial landscape. Read progress reports from Fliqa and miPlata, alongside final reports from BessPay and Paysys Labs. Plus, meet our newest NextGen Higher Education grantees!

Grant Reports

Ela Oblak for Fliqa

May 4

FLIQA - ILF Grant Progress Report

#progressreports

8 min read

FLIQA is utilizing open banking to streamline account-to-account payments, focusing on reducing costs and increasing transparency through the Interledger Open Payments standard. Their project integrates the Interledger Protocol (ILP) to provide inclusive financial services for migrant workers and unbanked populations in the UAE/GCC region and Latin America. By addressing barriers like high remittance costs and lack of infrastructure, FLIQA aims to support underserved individuals and SMEs in cash-dependent economies.

To learn more about Fliqa, you can read the full report here

Miguel Alecio for miPlata

Apr 28

miPlata Common Good Project — ILF Grant Progress Report #2

#progressreports

5 min read

Since their initial report in January 2026, miPlata has successfully transitioned from sandbox testing to operating a live Rafiki node on the Interledger network. This technical milestone supports their mission to provide a digital payroll alternative for SMB employers in the construction, hospitality, and agriculture sectors who staff unbanked Latino workers. The urgency for this digital solution has been underscored by US legislation effective January 1, 2026, which increased costs for cash-based remittances.

Read miPlata's latest grant report here

BessPay for BessPay

Apr 6

BessPay Plugin - ILF Grant Final Report

#finalreports

15 min read

The BessPay Plugin leverages Interledger Open Payments to provide MSMEs in the Global South with affordable, fast cross-border transaction infrastructure. Developed under the ILF Digital Financial Services Grant, the solution allows entrepreneurs to launch digital marketplaces and receive funds via Interledger-compliant wallets. This initiative addresses a critical gap in global commerce, as traditional platforms like Stripe and PayPal often have limited reach or high fees that hinder small businesses in emerging markets.

Read BessPay's final report to learn about the outcomes of this project.

Muhammad Arif

Apr 8

Paysys Labs — ILF Grant Final Report

#finalreports

10 min read

RafikiRemit is a partnership between Paysys Labs and Allied Bank Limited (ABL) designed to modernize cross-border remittances in Pakistan through the Interledger Protocol (ILP). By utilizing a Rafiki node, the project replaces traditional banking delays and high fees with instant, low-cost, and transparent transfers. The system uses a microservices architecture consisting of the ABL Core Banking Service for account and transaction management, OpenConnect Middleware as an API gateway, and an Internet Banking Service for user interaction. This infrastructure creates a production-ready pipeline that links a regulated commercial bank to the Interledger network.

Read Paysys Labs final report to discover what's next for their project.

New Grantee Introductions

Jonathan Oluranti for Covenant University

Apr 19

Covenant University Partners ILF on the Next Gen Program

2 min read

Covenant University, an African tech campus, is partnering with the Interledger Foundation to integrate open payments into its curriculum. This initiative aims to equip students with practical skills through new courses on financial inclusion and the Interledger Protocol (ILP). Key components include innovation labs, hackathons, and an incubator program to transform student projects into market-ready fintech startups. Additionally, the university will launch a student microgrant program and host the country's first Open Payments conference.

Farnaz Farid for Western Sydney University

Apr 15

Next-Gen Secure FinTech for Digital Financial Inclusion Using Interledger

#education #interledger #blogging #ilfgrantee

2 min read

Western Sydney University (WSU) has proposed the "Next-Gen Secure FinTech for Digital Financial Inclusion Using Interledger" initiative. This program focuses on education, innovation, and community empowerment through the Interledger Protocol (ILP). By leveraging the Interledger Architecture, WSU aims to become a regional leader in open payments education, aligning its goals with several United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including quality education, gender equality, and reduced inequalities. The project will use interdisciplinary curriculum development and student-led innovation to create a new generation of secure and inclusive FinTech applications.

Explore the impactful work of our grantees and share your thoughts, questions, or comments with us!

Stay up to date!

Read grant reports from our last quarterly roundup!
Catch up on all things Interledger in our most recent newsletters.
If you want to receive our newsletter directly to your inbox, subscribe here!

Digital cash, made socially responsible - GNU Taler | Interledger Community Call Summary | 13 May 2026

Vineel R. Pindi — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:56:18 +0000

Here is a recap of our 13th May 2026 Interledger Community Call, including a summary of the meeting and links to the recordings.

Notes, Recording and Podcast

Watch Meeting recording on YouTube.
Listen to the Podcast for free on YouTube here.
Public note-taking document here

Deeper Look: Digital cash, made socially responsible | GNU Taler

For May’s community call, we had Taler team sharing a deeper look into their project - "Digital cash, made socially responsible | GNU Taler".

Presentation and demo here.

About GNU Taler:
GNU Taler is a Free Software privacy-friendly payment system from the
GNU project. Taler does not use a blockchain: monetary policies are
expected to be set by a central bank. Digital money can be issued either by retail banks or by the central bank. Paying with Taler is
extremely efficient: customers authorize transactions with one click,
and then the system takes only a few milliseconds to finalize the
transactions. In this talk, we will introduce the political goals,
architecture and technology behind Taler, demonstrate the current state of the art and outline likely future developments.

About the Speaker:
Christian Grothoff is a professor for computer network security at the Bern University of Applied Sciences, researching future Internet architectures. His research interests include compilers, programming languages, software engineering, networking, security and privacy.
He is a GNU maintainer and co-founder of Taler Systems SA.

Lightning Intros:

Updates:

Interledger Grants:

Rafiki updates

Rafiki Updates - May 2026

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May 13

Rafiki Updates - May 2026

#rafiki #tech #engineering #ilp

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2 min read

Web Monetization updates

Web Monetization updates March to April 2026

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May 13

Web Monetization updates March to April 2026

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Blog posts:

Podcasts:

Arts as Civic Infrastructure: Kristina Newman-Scott on Cultivating Equitable Communities

Reports and Community Share-outs:

Upcoming events
May

Future of CDFIs Unleashed Summit, Atlanta (May 12-14)
Webinar | Digital Public Infrastructure for Payments: Digital Sovereignty, Interoperability and Consumer Protection. Join us! May 14 at 13h UTC. Register here >> https://evento.fgv.br/digitalinfrastructure1405/

June 1st

Open Payments Learning Month
A month of learning resources, social activities, rewards and workshops to learn more about Open Payments!
Stay tuned in our Slack for updates (JOIN US HERE)

June 4th week

UCT x ILF bootcamp & hackathon
University of Cape Town, South Africa (June 22 to 27)

Reminders:

Sign up for the ILF newsletter by joining our mailing list
Have questions or need help? Join us on Slack here.
Contribute to the Interledger project on GitHub and give it a ⭐

Interledger Community Call: PCH Mexico | 10 June 2026

Vineel R. Pindi — Thu, 21 May 2026 20:44:09 +0000

Join us for our May Interledger Community Call on 10 June 2026!

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

Deeper Look: People's Clearinghouse (PCH)

For June’s community call, we will have the People's Clearinghouse (PCH) team sharing a deeper look into their project.

About People's Clearinghouse (PCH):

People's Clearinghouse (PCH) is a digital payments platform designed to interconnect community banks and savings cooperatives in Mexico, among themselves, with the national financial system, and with international networks for account-deposited remittances. Built on the basis of open-source technology (Rafiki, Mojaloop, ILP), PCH is led by the Mexican Association of Social Sector Credit Unions (AMUCSS), an organization with four decades of experience building community-owned financial institutions in rural and indigenous regions. By routing remittances directly into community bank accounts rather than into cash, PCH aims to create a virtuous cycle: more local capital, more credit for productive projects, less inequality, and less forced migration.

People's Clearinghouse — ILF Grant Final Report

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People's Clearinghouse — ILF Grant Final Report

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Open Payments Month and Open Payments Accelerator:

Open Payments Month (June 1 - June 30)

What is Open Payments Learning Month?

Open Payments Accelerator Launch The Open Payments Accelerator grant program supports early-stage founders and developers building digital financial services for underserved communities, helping them move from idea to Proof of Concept (PoC) through 4 months of intense mentorship and funding.

Our goal is to lower barriers for innovators, grow a pipeline of Interledger-enabled solutions, and bring more people into accessible, interoperable financial systems.

Timeline: Applications opens on Monday, June 1, 2026 and closes on Tuesday, June 30, 2026 (11:59 PM EDT)

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.

Rafiki Updates - May 2026

Max Kurapov — Wed, 13 May 2026 15:01:19 +0000

Hello everyone!

May brings us the latest Rafiki release, v2.4.0-beta:

Key Highlights

Directed Identity

This release adds support for Open Payments API version 1.3.0, which includes the directed identity feature. This feature allows Open Payment clients to create non-interactive grants (like creating incoming payments) by providing a JSON Web Key (JWK) directly instead of a wallet address. This offers flexibility for client authentication in scenarios where the client wishes to avoid passing in their wallet address. You can check out the updated grant request payload in the Open Payments documentation.

Encrypted Data Exchange

We’ve introduced a way for Account Servicing Entities (ASEs) to exchange generic data during ILP payments. To ensure privacy, this data is encrypted during transmission using a STREAM data frame.

On the sending side: ASEs can use the new dataToTransmit field within the depositOutgoingPaymentLiquidity mutation to send data to the receiving ASE.
On the receiving side: By enabling the ENABLE_PARTIAL_PAYMENT_DECISION backend environment flag, ASEs will receive a webhook (incoming_payment.partial_payment_received) containing the sender's data. They can then choose to approve or reject this "partial" incoming payment via the confirmPartialIncomingPayment and rejectPartialIncomingPayment backend Admin APIs.
Security: Both sides have the option to use a DB_ENCRYPTION_SECRET to ensure this data remains encrypted at rest.

Node.js v24 Upgrade

In addition to the above, we have updated the Rafiki packages to Node.js version 24 to ensure long-term support and access to new Node features. Thank you to our first time contributor @Mwni for this improvement!

Updated release guide

On the documentation side of things, we have updated our Helm & Kubernetes deployment guide for the current version of Rafiki, which you can read here.

What's next

As we mentioned in our January community update, our major initiative this year is to release a version of Rafiki with an updated architecture aimed for high performance and increased scalability. This work is well underway across all areas of the Rafiki software, having completed the first milestone of being able to make payments between wallet addresses on the same Rafiki instance. We will continue updating the community as we build out this new system!

As always, we welcome you to join our monthly Rafiki community calls, with the next one coming up next week on Tuesday, May 19th at 14:30 UTC.

See you next time!

Web Monetization updates March to April 2026

Tseli — Wed, 13 May 2026 14:32:34 +0000

March and April offered good things for Web Monetization.

We shipped a new tool for publishers who already use Google Ad Manager and Offerwall, letting them add Web Monetization as a way for audiences to unlock a paywall. We introduced analytics tracking for publisher tools, giving us valuable ways to learn about how users engage with what we've built. And our globally distributed team were lucky enough to meet and work together, under the same roof for three days.

Publisher Tools

Web Monetization for Google Offerwall

The headline ship of the period is the Google Offerwall integration. A new integration for publishers who use Google Ad Manager to add Web Monetization as a way for their audiences to remove a paywall. The new tool is a bridge between two ecosystems that support revenue channels for publishers.

Analytics for publisher tools

We introduced analytics so we can understand how publishers actually use our tools. The goal is to understand how a publisher moves through setup: which tools they explore, whether they connect their wallet, whether they customise their interactive tools, and whether they follow-through to generating the script.

Improvements and fixes

Under the hood, we wrapped up the architecture overhaul and codebase refactor across all publisher tools. The payoff is better performance, a codebase that is easier to maintain, and a smoother path for open source contribution and adoption. Alongside this, we resolved a bug causing widget unresponsiveness on payment failure, and improved error handling so that both publishers and their audiences always know what's happening with a payment.

We improved configuration management for a seamless, more consistent experience across all publisher tools. Whether switching between tools or connecting to different wallet addresses, the correct configuration loads automatically. We also updated the website to make the Web Monetization WordPress plugin and the newly shipped Offerwall tool easy to access.

Browser Extension

Speed and agility

We replaced a third-party library with a lightweight wrapper around a browser-native equivalent. The extension is now smaller, faster to load, and lighter on memory. Still on speed, the extension now starts a payment session faster, the moment it detects that you have landed on a web monetized site that your wallet is able to pay.

Connect a wallet

We updated wallet key addition to stay compatible with changes made on the wallet side, keeping the wallet connection process smooth.

Pay as you browse

Added to that, your support for creators now continues uninterrupted when refreshing your wallet key configuration. Previously pay-as-you-browse was interrupted by a wallet key refresh. Now the extension resumes automatically.

The welcome screen

We moved the post-install welcome screen inside the extension. It's a structural change that tidies up the codebase and makes the project easier to navigate for anyone contributing for the first time.

Team work

Work week

We published a recap of our three-day work week in Romania. We had thirteen people that made up four workstreams, working towards one shared goal. Read the full story here.

On the horizon

Please join the community call on May 28th, at 1:00 PM UTC.
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/fjy-vjef-ogj

Please join us!