Interledger Foundation has announced its newest grantee, the Mifos Initiative, whose mission is to scale the development and impact of inclusive fintech through an open community.
Through the Interledger Foundation Research Grant, Mifos will explore how the Interledger Protocol (ILP) can be part of Digital Public Infrastructure and contribute to democratizing financial services through its open protocol suite for sending payments across different ledgers.
Mifos has pioneered open-source banking technology for the past fifteen years, transforming the entire sector at each major stage of evolution from microfinance to financial inclusion to digital financial services.
They were chosen as an MIT Solver for the 2021 Digital Inclusion Global Challenge and awarded the 2021 and 2022 Banking Tech Awards for Best Contribution to Economic Mobility in Banking & Finance.
Their building blocks for banking are recognized as digital public goods within digital public infrastructure to achieve the UN SDG of no poverty. Through making a core banking commoditized infrastructure, any organization can embed any financial service to any customer via any channel.
Briana Marbury, president & CEO of Interledger Foundation says,
“We are delighted to work with Mifos to support their mission of advancing the financial health of the underbanked to further digital financial inclusion efforts as a whole.“
Mifos is working with BaaSFlow, GH Solutions Consultants, and Brook IT Consulting to undertake this research with the goal of identifying the next steps for ensuring that Interledger is a part of Digital Public Infrastructure considerations for implementers.
Their research will bring together a range of stakeholders and experts in ILP, Digital Public Goods, G2P payments, and in-country experts to understand how this can be achieved and barriers to adoption that need to be overcome.
Their research will be made available through open communities and contribute to Interledger Foundation’s Mission to build equity and inclusion within a global interoperable payments network.
Ed Cable, president and CEO of Mifos, says:
“As a mission-driven organization, we are excited to explore the possibilities of the Interledger Protocol (ILP) as a building block within our growing ecosystem to improve people’s lives through access to financial services.”
BaaSFlow brings to the project its expertise in architecting and contributing to digital public goods.
“We’re looking forward to exploring how the Interledger Protocol and the Open Payments concept can be applied to Digital Public Infrastructure thinking in the context of Digital Public Goods like Mifos, Fineract, and G2P payments”, states BaaSFlow’s CEO James Dailey.
