Introduction:
INFITX recently attended the Mojaloop PI-24 OSS Community Meeting held in Nairobi, Kenya (March 25, 2024 – March 28, 2024). This four-day event united adopters, decision-makers, and developers who are enthusiastic about designing the future of financial inclusion. It gave a platform for a readout of the financial inclusion and contributions of the community during the preceding PI-23.
Open Source Community is built on collaboration:
An open-source platform is as good as the community supporting it. Successful open-source products rely on cohesive and self-organising Community members. At INFITX we appreciate the thought leadership of all established Community members and to develop a strong and inclusive Community we are leading the way in mentorship by supporting the Mojaloop Foundations Accelerator Program and related organisations’ efforts in Hackathons and other key development initiatives.
Reaching out to the Community:
INFITX is dedicated to supporting the Mojaloop adopter community. This meeting allowed us to interact with attendees on a more personal level and hear their needs first-hand; which helps us figure out how we can best serve them because success for Mojaloop lies in creating a collaborative environment where everybody thrives.
It was insightful to learn that in developing economies, as much as 98% of payments will leverage mobile technology as affirmed by Michael Eganza, Director at the Central Bank of Kenya. His statement underscores the far-reaching and inclusive potential of mobile payments in developing economies. The predicted adoption rate is a clear suggestion that mobile technology will become a ubiquitous tool for financial transactions, offering unprecedented access to services.
Capacity Building:
The Mojaloop Foundation runs an accelerator program where new, often start-up local in-country organisations are upskilled and onboarded as Mojaloop Contributors. INFITX has been supporting this initiative by mentoring some of these organisations helping them to integrate and run the Mojaloop technology. The success of the program was showcased at the convening where our mentees demonstrated creative and technically mature working payment solutions.
The community meeting was as always a colourful array of Community contributions on a wide range of topics as well as insightful addresses by Industry leaders on the continent.
INFITX enjoyed sharing the podium with many collaborators and gave individual contributions to the discussion as well as can be seen in these examples:
The mentees:
Spark Systems Limited, demonstrated a payment token registration portal that leverages the Mojaloop discovery and Mosip identity platform to provide a personalised payment Alias token. The solution supports the Government to Person Payments (part of the Digital Public Infrastructure initiatives) use case and demonstrates how the open ID connects authentication flow and can be leveraged to meet the concerns of a beneficiary management system while integrating to a fully secured mojaloop deployment.
iZyane, demonstrated a working integration with Airtel showcasing the Merchant request to pay Mojaloop use case against fully secured mojaloop deployment.
Probase Limited demonstrated their SmartPay product integrated into Mojaloop to support a peer-to-peer payment.
Seeing the success of these collaborations only strengthens our commitment towards advancing the mission of Mojaloop.
Plenary session contributors:
International Payments Addresses
Dr Michael Richards (INFITX) and Aranjay Katakam (Inclusive Action Lab)
ISO 20022
Dr Michael Richards (INFITX)
Foreign Exchange (FX) Algorithm
Dr Michael Richards and Paul Baker (INFITX) and Aung Thaw Aye (Thitsaworks)
On-premise deployment of Mojaloop
David Fry (INFITX) and James Bush (Mojaloop Foundation)
PISP
Paul Baker (INFITX)
G2P
Paul Makin (Mojaloop Foundation), Paul Baker (INFITX), Elijah Okello, James Simbi (Sparc Systems)
Core Team
Sam Kummary (Mojaloop Foundation) and David Fry, Steven Oderayi, Vijay Kumar, Paul Baker (INFITX)
And lastly a shout out to the individual contributors recognised by the foundation, we were particularly proud of the INFITX team members:
Kalin Krustev
David Fry
Vijay Guthi
Aaron Reynoza
Jane Stroucken
Sijo George
Conclusion:
What struck us most about the PI-24 meeting was how strong people can be when they come together under common goals like those within the Mojaloop community and in line with sustainable development goal no 17 and G20 targets for Payments to create shared value. The success is demonstrated by the significant growth and maturity of this community and its participants. It is this participation, collaboration and active support that has brought us to a point where 9 Central Banks in the African community were present to understand Mojaloop and contribute to our understanding of the value we can create. Adopters can be rest assured of our presence in this community as a constant promoting innovation and universal financial inclusion.
Call to Action:
Let’s collaborate. Let’s focus and find ways to achieve mutual success while staying true to our mission of financial inclusion. All community contributions are vital, and we are committed to making the ‘Mojaloop experience’ better for everyone.
To learn more about INFITX’s Mojaloop solutions or join the Mojaloop community, readers can visit our website. (www.infitx.com)
