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Chris Lawrence for Interledger Foundation

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Announcing a new call for proposals for ILP-based financial services

The Interledger Foundation (ILF) and its community are building pathways to financial access and opportunity across the world. We support people and ideas that use the Interledger Protocol (ILP) to contribute to an open payments network built on equitable access through the internet. 

In continued service of our mission, and learning from our Grant for the Web program, we are excited to announce the next open Call For Proposals (CFP) to target the creation of more financial nodes in the Interledger network. We will be looking for projects that want to plan and build financial services.

Examples of consumer-facing services we seek to activate as ILP nodes are digital wallets, mobile money providers, banks, neo-banks, and all include these characteristics: 

  • Enables money to be transferred on the ILP network 

  • Permits issuing and housing accounts for individuals and organizations

  • Uses an Electronic Money Institution license for the region, community, or use case projects will serve

  • Is designed for interoperability across systems and currencies

  • Is dedicated to open-source knowledge sharing as a contribution to the emerging ecosystem

"In our two years of grantmaking, we have learned that promise and excitement are not enough for our technology to expand financial access across the globe or to solve local problems. We are at an inflection point in the development of the Interledger Protocol where expanding the network is the critical next step. With this opportunity, we want to help Interledger-driven business models flourish by building on an open standards protocol while solving real problems for real people"

Briana Marbury, Interledger Foundation Executive Director

This CFP will support up to 20 projects through a research, development, and planning phase. This grant opportunity covers phase one, and projects selected in this opening round will be eligible and competitive for round two.

Phases

Research & Planning

We will award up to twenty projects $75K USD for a six-month project timeline in this first grant phase. These awards are planning grants that allow successful applicants to produce a dynamic business plan for becoming a node in the Interledger Network. Awardees will potentially have an opportunity to apply to the Prototyping Phase. 

Prototyping

Projects will advance with additional award funding to implement their plan and produce a working prototype/beta version of their service. This phase will focus on practical application and regulatory compliance to stand up a working prototype of the node and the capability it creates for its users.

Launch

Building from the first two phases, we will identify a set of projects that are ready to be operational. With the third round of awards, ILF will fund, support, and help launch fully functioning financial nodes into the Interledger Network.

We will begin accepting applications for the Research and Planning phase on May 17, 2022. 

We need new voices and ideas in the Interledger Network

We want to ensure that these financial innovations are coming from and created outside the typical locales and demographics. We seek to support communities that have -- and continue to be -- systemically and deliberately excluded from financial access and empowerment opportunities. For this CFP, we will increase the scoring of the following criteria in our judging process:

  • Projects located in and serving geographical locations outside North America and Western Europe.

  • Projects where a lead applicant is a person of color, or the team, represents a diverse group of people.

  • The output of the team benefits communities that have been historically underrepresented.

  • Funds are explicitly budgeted to address the increasing participation of historically marginalized and underrepresented communities.

Key details

  • All applicants must be a formal entity such as a company, NGO, educational institution, government agency, or other documented collective.

  • The Call for Proposals will be open from May 17 to July 8, 2022.

  • We will award up to 20 recipients at $75K USD in funds.

  • The cohort will kick off in 2022.

  • All details on requirements and processes will be shared when the application opens.

  • We use Submittable for our application process.

  • We will have two open office hours before the application form goes live, on May 12 at 12:00 pm UTC, and May 13 at 7:00 pm UTC

  • We will be answering questions on our Interledger Slack 

Top comments (9)

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radhyr profile image
Radhy • Edited

Hi Chris. Thanks for posting the info for the CFP.

Would love to see some fintech company from my country applied for this since I'm still waiting to get access for Web Monetization payment here in Indonesia. Inaccessibility to Interledger network outside US and other countries indeed a problem for many of us living here.

Personally, I'm also working on a side project of digital wallet (dashboard-like template) to be integrated with Rafiki/Interledger devnet later on but that's within the scope of opensource boilerplate/template for others (who capable getting the right license from their governments) able to easily bootstrap or experiment their own digital wallet project. What's missing for me though to eligible for this CFP is that I'm not part of formal entity with the license on this and not ready to register as such.

Is this the only CFP open this year or do you have plan for another CFP that's available for general public and individuals later on, Chris? I would love to participate on this topic but I can only submit for smaller scale CFP.

Thanks!

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chrislarry profile image
Chris Lawrence

Thanks @radhyr We are considering 1 more CFP, although it will be different from anything we have done before including this one. We would love to see submissions from your country/region. Let us know if we can be of any help!

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radhyr profile image
Radhy

We would love to see submissions from your country/region. Let us know if we can be of any help!

Lots candidates I think would be great to serve as Interledger nodes in Indonesia. I'm personally an avid user of Indonesian new neobank Jago, personally a fan of their seamless integration of Virtual Credit Card to their pocket balance - something that I see also could work great with Interledger payment pointer! Neobanks in Indonesia still in its infancy and the one I mentioned just now hadn't even connected internationally via SWIFT network. Would be great to see if Interledger Foundation could officially invite them to join Interledger with this CFP. 🙏

We are considering 1 more CFP, although it will be different from anything we have done before including this one.

Any chance previous year grantee could submit to this CFP Chris?

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chrislarry profile image
Chris Lawrence

All past/present grantees are eligible to apply given they meet the other requirements (full terms will be available when application opens on 5/17)

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chrislarry profile image
Chris Lawrence

Also love those ideas/companies you discussed. All should definitely consider applying.

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queenvee profile image
Victory

Hi Chris,
My friend and I have been working on this game fintech startup idea, we’ve only discussed and designed parts of the MVP before now.
This grant gives us a chance to take our business mainstream and I love that for us.
Now, I’m pretty worried because we might have to register our business as an entity. I’m wondering if that could work for this grant if the business is newly registered? Can you share any insight on that?

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chrislarry profile image
Chris Lawrence

@queenvee It can be a newly formed business, but will still need to answer the due diligence section of the application. This CFP will not be giving grant to individuals.

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queenvee profile image
Victory

Thanks Chris. This is such a relief.

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johnklein94 profile image
John Klein • Edited

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