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 and entrepreneur who 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.

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/

The Interledger Community 🌱: ShujaaPay