The Interledger Foundation (ILF) and its community are building pathways to financial access and opportunity across the globe.
The organization supports 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 its mission and learning from its Grant for the Web program, Interledger “announced the next open Call For Proposals (CFP) to target the creation of more financial nodes in the Interledger network.”
Briana Marbury, Interledger Foundation Executive Director, stated:
“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”
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.”
Interledger is seeking projects that “focus on planning and building financial services.”
Examples of consumer-facing services they seek to activate as ILP nodes “are digital wallets, mobile money providers, banks and neo-banks” which 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
- Seeking New voices and Ideas in the Interledger Network
Interledger wants “to ensure that these financial innovations are coming from and created outside the typical locales and demographics.”
ILF seeks “to support communities that have – and continue to be – systemically and deliberately excluded from financial access and empowerment opportunities.”
For this CFP, ILF will ‘increase the scoring” of the following criteria in the 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.”
Phases:
- Research & Planning: Interledger 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, Interledger 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.
Interledger will begin “accepting applications for the Research and Planning phase on May 17, 2022.”
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.
- ILF 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. Submittable will be used for the application process.”
ILF 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.”
They will be “answering questions on their Interledger Slack.”
The Interledger Foundation is “a non-profit advocate for the web, promoting innovation, creativity, and inclusion by advancing open payment standards and technologies that seamlessly connect our global society.”