The Interledger Community 🌱: Kanzu Finance

Kanzu Microloans — ILF Grant Progress Report 2

Maria Gorrettie Namuddu — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 12:23:22 +0000

Brief Project Description

Kanzu Microloans is an ILP-enabled digital infrastructure that allows SACCO members to access instant microloans through mobile and web self-service platforms. By integrating with the Rafiki network and leveraging ILP, we aim to automate credit scoring, disbursement, and repayment, allowing SACCOs to scale affordable lending with minimal friction.

Project Update

The backend and frontend implementation of the full loan lifecycle is complete — from loan product creation, loan application and credit scoring to disbursement and repayment integrations. Users will be able to request and repay microloans directly through the Kanzu Finance mobile and web apps.

Key updates:

The Kanzu-Rafiki adapter development is now complete, enabling ILP-powered disbursement and repayment processing. Loan request flow

Loan lending flow

MoMo integration for mobile money disbursement is fully implemented and tested.
The sales team is 40% staffed, and recruitment is ongoing to close remaining gaps.
ISMS setup is 90% complete and on track for full completion by the end of the month.
We have acquired our Data Protection Certificate.
The board still has one vacant seat; our preferred candidate had a conflict of interest due to an existing fintech board role.
The technical stack is fully ready, and the staging environment is live, stable, and functional.
We are now focused on settlement. At present, we’re moving digital value; the next step is enabling real money movement, including liquidation and full settlement. We are actively seeking partners to support this capability.
We travelled to Mexico for the Interledger Summit, where we showcased our work during the demo lab and community sessions.

Project Impact & Target Audience(s)

Our project is designed to expand financial access for underserved and systematically excluded communities by enabling instant, low-cost microloans and open, interoperable payments through the Interledger Protocol (ILP). The primary beneficiaries are community-based financial institutions—SACCOs, VSLAs, MFIs, and investment groups—that serve populations traditionally left out of mainstream finance. These groups include women and girls, youth, rural and low-income households, BIPOC communities, and informal workers, all of whom rely heavily on community finance structures for savings, credit, and emergency liquidity.

The intended impact is twofold:

Practical financial inclusion — making it possible for individuals in marginalised communities to access responsible credit, repay flexibly, and participate in digital financial systems without high fees or institutional barriers.
Institutional strengthening — equipping small financial cooperatives with modern tools for loan creation, credit scoring, disbursement, and repayment, reducing operational friction and ensuring fair, transparent lending processes.

Our work supports the mission of the Interledger Foundation by demonstrating real-world ILP adoption within grassroots financial ecosystems. By integrating ILP into loan disbursement and repayment, the project helps extend open payments to populations that rarely benefit from global digital infrastructure.

Additionally, participation in the Interledger Summit and the community showcase in Mexico helped raise awareness of how open financial technologies can directly improve livelihoods in emerging markets. The project contributes both a new technical implementation and a new understanding of how open payments can drive social and economic mobility for marginalised groups

Progress on Objectives, Key Activities

Objectives

Develop a fully functional, ILP-enabled Instant Microloans Infrastructure within Kanzu Banking that allows SACCOs, VSLAs, and MFIs to offer real-time loans to their members.
Advance Financial Inclusion for the Underserved by providing accessible, fast, and secure microloans, especially to women and low-income communities who are unbanked or underbanked.
Leverage Open Infrastructure (ILP + Rafiki) to ensure cross-border, interoperable payments and build the foundation for scalable, open financial rails.
Strengthen SACCOs & VSLAs by enabling them to operate digitally, reduce costs, automate credit scoring, and scale their impact sustainably.

Key Activities

Backend & Frontend Development - Develop and integrate the loan product engine, credit scoring, loan disbursement, and repayment modules into Kanzu Banking.[Completed]
Complete Rafiki adapter integration and mobile/web front-end interfaces. [Completed]
Sandbox Testing & Rafiki Peering [Pending]
Create a developer playground to test Rafiki functionality and simulate loan operations.[Completed]
Peer with a public Rafiki node and conduct stress testing for interoperability.[Pending]
User-Centric Design & Accessibility - Build for low digital literacy with clear UI/UX.[In Progress]
Community & Regulatory Engagement [In Progress]
Align with UMRA [Ministry of Finance], BoU, and NITA-U to meet regulatory requirements.[In Progress]
Engage with the ILP developer community and contribute to the ecosystem.[In Progress]
Marketing & Communication - Publish blog posts, run webinars, and document impact stories.[Pending]

Communications and Marketing

We have discussed this work publicly across multiple platforms and formats, primarily focusing on open payments, digital financial inclusion, and the role of ILP in expanding access for underserved communities.

Interledger Summit 2025 – Mexico City
Participated in the Demo Lab and Community Showcase, presenting our ILP-powered microfinance and microloan infrastructure.
Link to presentation

Media Mentions & Write-ups
We are pleased to share that Kanzu Finance Limited has progressed to the finals of the MEST Africa Challenge 2025.

Maria represented the Kanzu Finance at the semi-finals, and Peter will be representing us in South Africa for the finals next week. This recognition underscores the potential of Kanzu Finance to scale digital financial inclusion across underserved communities, highlighting our continued commitment to innovation in financial technology.

The recent Interledger hackathon demonstrated the power of collaboration, open technology, and visionary thinking.

Our project, Shabaha, goes beyond a simple plugin—it represents an innovative approach to integrating learning and earning, creating new opportunities for students to access education and financial rewards simultaneously.

Winning third place at the hackathon in Mexico City was a significant recognition of the team’s efforts. This milestone marks only the beginning, as we continue to explore how digital payments, educational tools, and opportunity can be connected to empower learners worldwide.

We are especially grateful to the Interledger Foundation community for their mentorship, guidance, and inspiration throughout the event, which has helped shape the ongoing development and impact of Shabaha.
Link to presentation

What’s Next?

In the next phase, our focus is on moving from validated prototypes to fully operational, real-world deployment.

Finalise Settlement & Liquidity Partnerships - Our immediate priority is securing partners who can support fiat settlement, liquidity management, and compliant money movement. While digital-value transfers are functional, establishing regulated settlement rails will enable us to transition to full end-to-end money flow, including liquidation and reconciliation.
Complete Licensing Processes - We will continue engagements with the Bank of Uganda and the Ministry of Finance to advance the NPS license applications. This remains a key milestone for moving into a production environment.
User Testing & Pilot Launch - With the technical stack and staging environment fully ready, we will run comprehensive end-to-end user tests in the coming sprint. Pilot onboarding with selected SACCOs and VSLA partners will follow.
Team Structure - We will complete hiring for the remaining sales roles, ensuring the team is fully positioned for market engagement and early customer acquisition.
Information Security & Compliance Completion - With the ISMS already 90% complete, we expect full implementation by month-end, reinforcing our readiness for regulatory and enterprise-level partnerships. The data protection certificate already obtained strengthens this posture.
Product Refinement Based on Community Feedback - Insights gained from the Interledger Summit in Mexico City, the demo lab, and the community showcase will inform upcoming feature refinements and roadmap prioritisation.

Community Support

We welcome any guidance or collaboration opportunities the community may offer. If there are insights, partnership avenues, or forms of support that could help us accelerate our work, especially around liquidation, settlement, and real money-movement infrastructure, we would be deeply grateful.

We remain open to collaborating wherever our expertise or networks can accelerate your progress. Should you require technical input, problem-solving support, or curated introductions, we are available and ready to assist.

Kanzu MicroLoans — ILF Grant Progress Report 1

Maria Gorrettie Namuddu — Sat, 12 Jul 2025 16:48:26 +0000

Brief Project Description

Target Audience & Expected Impact

Primary Target Group: Unbanked and Underbanked SACCO, VSLA & MFI Members

Context: Uganda’s population is approximately 48 million.
Financial Exclusion: 89% of Ugandans are either unbanked or underbanked, meaning they lack reliable access to formal financial institutions or products.
Demographic Composition: Over 82% of SACCO and VSLA members are women, especially from low-income and rural households.

Secondary Audience: SACCO, VSLA & MFI Administrators - These are the decision-makers and operators of the financial cooperatives. The infrastructure will enhance their ability to serve members more efficiently by automating loan workflows and enabling instant disbursement.

Tertiary Audience: Growing Middle-Class SACCOs -The project also targets more financially sophisticated SACCOs, such as staff and institutional SACCOs, that are often overlooked in financial inclusion programs. These groups are well-positioned to adopt advanced tools like data-driven credit scoring, interoperable payments, and are increasingly capable of transacting across borders, especially in response to the needs of mobile or diaspora-linked members.

Additional Statistics for Context

Mobile penetration: Over 70% of Ugandans own a mobile phone, but digital financial literacy varies.
Access to financial institutions: In rural Uganda, only 14% of people live within 5 km of a bank.
Informal lending prevalence: Due to barriers in traditional finance (collateral, paperwork), 40%+ rely on high-risk informal loans.
Gender credit gap: Women receive 20–30% less in formal credit than men on average, despite higher repayment rates.

Why the ILP Microloan Program Matters

It provides instant, digital, and inclusive credit access, especially in emergencies.
It supports financial resilience and economic empowerment for grassroots communities.
It also supports data-based credit scoring, so those without formal histories (like rural women entrepreneurs) can build trust-based financial footprints.

Expected Impact

Improve access to credit for over 50,000 SACCO members, 70% of whom are women
Reduce loan disbursal time from days to minutes
Lower barriers to credit for informal workers, border traders, and youth
Enable data-driven lending, reducing default risk while increasing inclusion
Transact across financial systems without needing a traditional bank account

Project Update

We’ve made strong progress on the backend implementation of the entire loan lifecycle, from loan product creation and credit scoring to disbursement and repayment integrations. The frontend for self-service loan application is still under development, but once live, users will be able to request and repay microloans entirely through the Kanzu Finance mobile and web apps.
Key updates:

The Rafiki adapter is under development to support disbursement and repayment processing via ILP.
The MoMo integration for mobile money disbursement is complete and tested.
The team is 90% staffed. We are still working on the sales department.
Talks and consultations with the Bank of Uganda and the Ministry of Finance are underway regarding obtaining the NPS and the digital lending licenses.
The board profiles for the new board are complete, and candidates have been put forward.

The technical stack is nearly ready, and we are gearing up to begin end-to-end user testing in the next development sprint.

Kanzu Banking Core-Rafiki Dual Data Sync Strategy

The solution empowers financially underserved populations, aligns with the Interledger Foundation’s mission to foster open payments, and brings real-world ILP adoption to grassroots financial systems.

Progress on Objectives, Key Activities

Objectives

Develop a fully functional, ILP-enabled Instant Microloans Infrastructure within Kanzu Banking that allows SACCOs, VSLAs, and MFIs to offer real-time loans to their members.
Advance Financial Inclusion for the Underserved by providing accessible, fast, and secure microloans, especially to women and low-income communities who are unbanked or underbanked.
Leverage Open Infrastructure (ILP + Rafiki) to ensure cross-border, interoperable payments and build the foundation for scalable, open financial rails.
Strengthen SACCOs & VSLAs by enabling them to operate digitally, reduce costs, automate credit scoring, and scale their impact sustainably.

Key Activities

Backend & Frontend Development - Develop and integrate the loan product engine, credit scoring, loan disbursement, and repayment modules into Kanzu Banking.[In Progress]
Complete Rafiki adapter integration and mobile/web front-end interfaces. [In Progress]
Sandbox Testing & Rafiki Peering [Pending]
Create a developer playground to test Rafiki functionality and simulate loan operations.[Pending]
Peer with a public Rafiki node and conduct stress testing for interoperability.[Pending]
User-Centric Design & Accessibility - Build for low digital literacy with clear UI/UX.[In Progress]
Community & Regulatory Engagement [In Progress]
Align with UMRA [Ministry of Finance], BoU, and NITA-U to meet regulatory requirements.[In Progress]
Engage with the ILP developer community and contribute to the ecosystem.[In Progress]
Marketing & Communication - Publish blog posts, run webinars, and document impact stories.[Pending]

Communications and Marketing

At the Seamless Conference, we aimed to engage the management team of a SACCO union representing over 500,000 end users. Our goal was to advance conversations around onboarding them to Kanzu Banking, which would lay the groundwork for broader adoption of ILP-enabled cross-border transactions once development is finalised. Notably, their board chairman was among the conference speakers, offering a strategic opportunity to align on shared priorities. The irony of tech exclusion (no WiFi at the venue) sparked powerful conversations about infrastructure and access. Check out this article for more context.

Internal blog post on the microloan use case in ILP context being drafted.
Marketing materials (video explainers and SACCO onboarding guides) are in production.

What’s Next?

Complete frontend development for self-service microloan requests and repayments
Finalise Rafiki adapter development for loan disbursement and repayment workflows
Begin pilot testing with selected SACCOs and track user experience
Launch a communication campaign to onboard more SACCOs
Venture into new markets to promote cross-border transactions
Acquire all the licenses needed for regulatory compliance

Community Support

We’d love:

Feedback on building ILP use cases in credit infrastructure
Connections to partners testing Rafiki or ILP in similar environments
Shared insights on credit scoring engines in low-data contexts

Additional Comments

This project is showing us how vital intentional infrastructure is for true financial inclusion. By embedding ILP into everyday SACCO workflows, we’re making finance work for the last mile, not just the middle.

Kanzu Banking System architecture diagram
Micro_Loan_Disbursement_Flow

Project Introduction: Kanzu Microloans – Real-Time Credit Access for the Underserved

Maria Gorrettie Namuddu — Sun, 04 May 2025 09:55:18 +0000

Hello Community,

We’re excited to introduce the Kanzu Microloans project by @Kanzu Finance Limited, developed with support from the Interledger Foundation through the Financial Services Grant. With this project, we are building an open, instant microloans infrastructure embedded within our flagship platform, Kanzu Banking, and powered by Rafiki and the Interledger Protocol (ILP).

This solution is designed to address the persistent challenges faced by community-based savings groups such as SACCOs, VSLAs, and investment clubs. While these groups play a vital role in grassroots financial inclusion, they continue to face long loan processing times, fragmented systems, and limited access to credit when it’s needed most.

Our aim is to provide a mobile-first, interoperable platform where SACCO members can apply for and receive microloans instantly via mobile wallets—with repayment terms tailored to their needs. By leveraging open payments technology, we are eliminating bottlenecks and enabling true financial agility for underserved communities.

Key benefits include:

Speed – loans are disbursed in seconds, not days.
Security – built on open, secure financial protocols.
Inclusion – extends credit to communities traditionally left out of the formal financial system.
Interoperability – designed for seamless integration across networks, platforms, and borders.

We’re thrilled to partner with the Interledger Foundation to build the future of equitable financial access—starting right here in Uganda.

Stay tuned as we pilot this solution, gather community feedback, and refine the experience for even greater impact.