The Interledger Community 🌱: Raibim

Bokamosos Road to 2nd Place

Raibim — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 15:47:14 +0000

Meet the Team

Nikola Milosavljevic (top left), Annita Ngoma (top middle), Ndumiso Zondi (top right) , Raibim Alam (bottom left) and Realeboha Motlamelle (bottom right). We are current MPhil students in Financial Technology at the University of Cape Town.
Fun fact : we all like milk.

Our Hackathon Background

For some of our team this was a first hackathon; others had competed before. What we share is enjoying the work of coming together as a team, identifying a real-world problem, and building toward a solution against a tight clock.

What stood out most was watching a concept turn into a functioning product. Having that effort recognised with second place was incredibly rewarding, and it reinforced the value of rapid experimentation, teamwork, and building for real-world challenges.

The format also felt familiar: it closely mirrored our Financial Software Engineering class at university. So even for the first-timers among us, nothing felt completely alien and our MPhil background helped us converge on a solution quickly.

Preparation

Before the hackathon, we participated in a series of lectures and hands-on workshops that laid the foundation for our project. The Interledger Foundation introduced us to the Open Payments protocol and its core concepts, while Dr. Allan Davids provided valuable insights into the evolution of money, how payments move through financial systems, and the future of digital payments. We also attended technical tutorial sessions with Marc Levin (who also tutors our FSE classes), where we gained practical experience working with the Open Payments ecosystem.

Beyond the workshops, we researched embedded finance and explored the financial inclusion challenges facing South Africa, particularly the barriers that prevent informal workers from accessing traditional retirement savings products. These sessions and our research helped us identify a real-world problem that aligned with the capabilities of Open Payments and ultimately inspired the development of Rank Save.

What We Learnt

The hackathon taught us that building on an open standard requires understanding both its possibilities and its constraints. We learned how the Open Payments protocol enables secure, consent-based, interoperable payments and how recurring grants can be used to automate micro-investments after a single user authorization.

The Challenge

We tackled the challenge of making retirement savings accessible to South Africa's informal workforce. The country's retirement savings system is built around stable employment, regular salaries, and fixed debit order dates, leaving millions of gig workers, casual labourers, street vendors, and unemployed individuals without a practical way to save consistently for retirement.

This problem resonated with us on a personal level. One of our teammates watched her grandmother reach retirement without savings and become financially dependent on her mother, who also had limited opportunities to save for retirement. She wanted to break that cycle, inspiring us to ask how technology could make long-term savings more inclusive for people with irregular incomes.

Our Solution

Rank Save is a mobile-first micro-investing application designed to make retirement savings accessible to South Africa's informal workforce. Millions of gig workers, domestic workers, street vendors, and small business owners are excluded from traditional retirement products because they don't have fixed salaries or employer-sponsored pension schemes.

Our solution turns spending into saving. Users choose a savings rate of 1%, 3%, or 6% (6% by default), and every qualifying purchase made through an Open Payments-enabled checkout automatically triggers a micro-investment into their retirement savings fund. Instead of relying on fixed monthly debit orders, savings grow naturally alongside everyday spending, making it possible for people with irregular incomes to build long-term financial security.

We built Rank Save on Interledger's Open Payments protocol, using it as the core of our architecture rather than simply as a payment method. We implemented recurring outgoing-payment grants, allowing users to provide consent once and then automate future contributions within a predefined monthly limit. Our application monitors qualifying Open Payments transactions using a read-scoped grant, calculates the configured savings percentage, creates an Incoming Payment, generates a Quote, and executes an Outgoing Payment to the user's retirement fund through the Open Payments API.

To develop and validate the solution, we used the wallet.interledger-test.dev environment to simulate wallets, transactions, and end-to-end payment flows. This allowed us to demonstrate a complete working prototype, showing how interoperable payments can power automated micro-investing without requiring users to take any additional action after their initial setup.

To encourage long-term saving, Rank Save also provides users with a dashboard showing their contribution history, current balance, and a projected retirement value based on consistent saving. Our goal is simple: set your savings percentage once, spend as you normally would, and let your retirement savings grow automatically in the background.

Mentorship

A challenge we faced was implementing the recurring payment flow correctly. We needed to understand how recurring grants, quotes, incoming payments, and outgoing payments fit together to enable automated micro-investing while keeping the user in control through a single consent flow.

The mentors were invaluable throughout this process. They encouraged us to validate our assumptions against the Open Payments specification instead of designing around ideal scenarios. Their guidance helped us simplify our architecture, narrow our MVP to something technically achievable, and use the protocol in the way it was intended rather than forcing it to fit our idea.

What's Next?

We are still evaluating whether to continue developing this idea or pivot to another concept that was also shortlisted amongst the staff during the hackathon.

Fin Illuminaries At The Interledger X Innovation Hub Hackathon

Raibim — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 19:23:55 +0000

Meet The Team

Our team, known as Fin Illuminaries, is dedicated to delivering more efficient and user-friendly payment solutions to the fintech industry. What sets us apart is not only the innovative system we have developed but also our strong and diverse academic backgrounds, which provide us with the technical expertise and problem-solving skills to make a meaningful impact in financial technology. These diverse backgrounds also allow us to approach challenges from a variety of perspectives, ensuring that our solutions are well-rounded, inclusive, and adaptable to real-world needs.

Our team members are:

Ahmed Lateef – Bachelor of Engineering Technology in Computer Engineering
Amukeleni Rikhotso – Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Business Computing
Raibim Alam – Bachelor of Science in Engineering (Mechanical and Mechatronics)
Sakeenah Majiet – Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Business Computing
Moegamat Rashaad Samsodien – Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

Bootcamp Experience

One of the fundamental insights we gained from the bootcamp is that without a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of money and how it has developed into what we have today, we cannot adequately address the challenges we face in making payments and transactions easier. Dr. Allan David emphasized this point and posed thought-provoking questions to us: Is the technology you want to build suitable for the times in which you are building it? Will it be effective, and will people actually be interested in using it? Are there existing solutions that could render your advanced innovation unnecessary?

He also highlighted that sometimes, creating a simple technology that solves real problems can have a greater impact than building something complex but impractical.

Overall, this bootcamp provided us with valuable insights and questions that shaped our approach to developing our solution. It influenced the creation of our payment system using the Interledger Protocol, aimed at providing a unified and accessible method of payment that everyone can use.

Hackathon Experience

For most of our team, the Interledger Hackathon was a completely new experience, with several members participating in a hackathon for the first time. One member had previous experience and found this hackathon just as enriching and rewarding as their first. Another team member, while not new to coding, was new to web development and working with APIs. They learned the necessary skills through the provided tutorials and were able to contribute meaningfully to the project. As a team, we appreciated the fast-paced and collaborative environment, as well as the opportunity to challenge ourselves both creatively and technically. The experience encouraged us to think on our feet, make quick decisions, and work together effectively under pressure. While achieving a successful outcome was important, our primary goal was to develop new skills, gain fresh insights, and grow both individually and as a team. This hackathon provided all of that and more.

The Problem We Tackled

Our team set out to tackle a challenge close to home: millions of South Africans are still excluded from digital payments due to high data costs, lack of internet access, and limited banking infrastructure. We saw this firsthand and built a solution that works on any mobile phone without the need for data, Wi-Fi, airtime, or a bank account. Powered by Interledger technology, it enables fast, secure, and low-cost transactions for anyone, anywhere. Our mission was to create real financial freedom and empower communities to fully participate in the digital economy.

Our Tech Solution

Our project, Cache Money, is a USSD-powered offline payment system designed to support financial inclusion in regions with limited internet access. It links users’ SIM cards to secure wallets tied to their national ID, allowing them to manage budgets and send token-based payments entirely through basic mobile phones. No apps or data required.

We built the backend using Interledger technology to handle value transfers efficiently across different currencies and providers. This ensures that transactions are fast, affordable, and work across borders. The simple USSD interface serves as a user-friendly frontend, enabling users to interact with their wallet, send payments, and check balances all without needing to go online. Cache Money provides a practical financial solution for communities typically excluded from the digital economy.

The Pitch Experience

We were given five minutes to present our idea to the judges and other participants, which felt like a very short amount of time considering the complexity of the problem we were addressing. The environment on the day was really supportive and filled with people who were genuinely excited to see what others had built. That helped ease some of the pressure. One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to clearly explain both the problem and our solution in just a few sentences. The issue we tackled is something that impacts the lives of many South Africans, so we felt a real responsibility to communicate our idea in a meaningful and impactful way. Despite the time constraints, we stayed focused, delivered our pitch with confidence, and felt proud of how we represented our project.

Mentorship Experience

We are deeply grateful to all the staff members who were present throughout the hackathon and took the time to genuinely listen to our questions and concerns. Their support made a significant difference to our experience. At one point, we found ourselves stuck on a technical challenge, and members of the Interledger team stayed with us, patiently helping us work through the problem until we found a solution. They consistently offered words of encouragement, maintained a positive attitude, and answered our questions with a smile. Their mentorship provided both technical guidance and emotional support, creating an environment where we felt heard, motivated, and confident in our ability to overcome obstacles.

What's Next For Fin Illuminaries?

Looking ahead, our next steps are focused on turning our prototype into a fully functional solution. We're finalizing the demo by integrating recurring token logic to support ongoing transactions. We're also in the process of applying for Interledger funding to help scale our impact. Once the MVP is complete, we plan to connect with fintech partners who share our vision, and begin conversations with USSD aggregators or mobile networks to gain the access needed to bring our solution to real users on the ground.