Mojaloop is open-source software for financial services companies, government regulators, and others taking on the challenges of interoperability and financial inclusion.
For the billions of people living without access to a bank account, simple transactions, like paying rent electronically or registering a child for school, are often out of reach. Although digital financial services are on the rise in the developing world — driven by growing mobile phone prevalence — progress is slowed by incompatibility between different banks and financial service providers. Each institution has to build its own technology to accept payments, meaning an employee may not be able to easily transfer money from a paycheck to a grocer or relative.
In an effort to solve this problem (closing the loop in financial services) the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has released a new open-source software for creating payment platforms that will help unbanked people around the world access digital financial services. The software is designed to provide a reference model for payment interoperability between banks and other providers across a country’s economy.
Mojaloop — adapted from “moja,” the Swahili word for “one” — connects the different ways a user receives and sends money so that their funds aren’t siloed in one or two accounts.
Why was it made?
According to the project website “Customers should be able to send digital payments to anyone, regardless of what kind of account or service they use. Mojaloop makes it easier for financial providers to achieve interoperability”.
Who is it for?
According to the project website: “Anyone in financial services is invited to explore and use the code. In particular, it enables central banks, market infrastructures, payment processors, and fintech firms to accelerate the creation and deployment of interoperable payment platforms that can scale in serving the poor. It gives existing payment processors and providers a level playing field to connect to”.
This is a good one for open-source. As it is one way to reinterate the reality that open-source is the way too go in maximizing effort and achieving wonderful innovations in solving world problems.
Happy Linux’NG!
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