Interledger-NextGen Higher Education Programme Grant

Grants for higher education institutions to establish or expand graduate and undergraduate programmes and campus activities that provide real-world experience in open-source practices, open-payment technologies, and inclusive digital financial systems

The Interledger Foundation, based in the United States, is a global non-profit foundation founded on the mission to expand access to digital financial services for the 1.4 billion people worldwide who are currently excluded from traditional banking systems. The Foundation advocates for the adoption of open, interoperable, currency-agnostic payment solutions utilising the Interledger Protocol (ILP) and other open source platforms.

The Foundation seeks to support ideas and people that use ILP to contribute to building equity and inclusion within a global interoperable payments network and the development of consumer-facing services that will activate as ILP nodes. Its ultimate goal is to create an ecosystem that permits frictionless payments and micropayments across currencies and ledgers, connecting everyone, regardless of identity, geography or income.

Its Global Strategy for Change seeks to:

• Support the development of digital financial systems in vulnerable areas.
• Fund innovative solutions geared towards serving underrepresented populations.
• Foster an ecosystem that supports a paradigm shift in payment systems.
• Create a robust and active Interledger community that grows together.
• Enrich talent pipelines to bring new voices and perspectives into the fintech space.

The Interledger-NextGen Higher Education Programme seeks to collaborate with tertiary institutions to highlight the impact of technology on financial access and inclusion. Grants are available to higher education institutions to establish or expand graduate and undergraduate programmes that provide real-world experience in open-source practices, open-payment technologies, and inclusive digital financial systems.

The objective of the programme is to nurture talent pipelines by working with educational institutions to inspire future leaders to advocate for inclusive digital financial systems; help shape the next generation of digital financial inclusion leaders, and prepare students to be innovators in open payments, open-source, fintech, and social change.

Overall, the grant aims to accomplish the following goals:

• Increase student engagement, interaction, and learning about open-payment technologies, open-source, and digital financial inclusion with a significant focus on the Interledger Protocol and related technologies.
• Enable faculty to implement effective forward-thinking initiatives to enable digital financial literacy and inclusion.
• Showcase career pathways in open payments, open-source, sustainable development, and the multi-disciplinary fintech space.

The Interledger Foundation will consider a wide range of projects representing a blend of campus activities, including, for example:

• Highlight new open-source technologies (Interledger Protocol & Rafiki) and intend to integrate them into the course curriculum by designing a project for students to complete using this technology, which could include:
  • Revamping, developing, and delivering a curriculum with an essential focus on digital financial inclusion and how technology through open payments can foster access to underserved and unbanked communities.
  • Technological exploration which includes incorporating and/or prototyping a solution enabled by Interledger Protocol or Rafiki, ie in the form of a Hackathon or the development of a demo software solution.
• Provide career guidance and placement opportunities to connect students with emerging careers in open-source technology, whether through internships, fellowships, etc:
  • The focus should be on exploring means to build students’ skills in fields such as: entrepreneurship, social impact, marketing and communications, fintech policy and regulations, research, etc.