As the Mojaloop Foundation prepares for a leadership transition, it also marks the close of a defining chapter. Paula Hunter, executive director since the Foundation’s launch, will retire after many years spent helping guide Mojaloop from concept to real-world deployment.
At the same time, a new phase begins. Jean Bosco Iyacu will step into the role of CEO starting June 1, 2026, bringing deep experience in financial inclusion and strong ties across the African fintech landscape.
In the following Q&A, Paula reflects on how Mojaloop began, how it has grown, and what comes next.
What is Mojaloop, and why was it created?
“Mojaloop is an open source platform created to help countries build inclusive, instant payment systems (IIPSs) to help address financial inclusion. However, developing countries, particularly in Africa and Southeast Asia, lacked the necessary infrastructure to deploy instant payment solutions to the mass population.
There’s a lot of unbanked and underserved individuals, particularly in developing economies, and many of those countries want to bring their citizens into a digital economy, but the costs are prohibitive.
By investing in this and giving the infrastructure away, if you will — the technology, the code — it reduces the barrier to adoption.”
How did the Mojaloop project get started?
“The Mojaloop Foundation was legally started in May of 2020. I started working on the project a year earlier to establish the legal entity and the business plan and the funding for the foundation.
The Gates Foundation had invested in the technology and then said, we need to turn it over to an entity that will take over the stewardship of the code, develop a strong community, and evangelize the adoption of Mojaloop.
We launched in May and started hiring right after that, at the onset of the COVID pandemic, which created some challenges but also helped us establish a global, virtual workforce.”
Why were you chosen as executive director?
“I’ve always been in the technology sector, but about 25 years ago I started working with industry consortia — entities that gather technology companies that want to solve a problem collaboratively.
I also migrated into open source during that time and developed an appreciation for that development model.
When the Gates Foundation was looking for someone to lead the Mojaloop Foundation, they wanted someone with experience in standards, open source, and mobile technology. I had been executive director of the NFC Forum, which brought together companies like Apple, Samsung, Google, Mastercard, and Visa.
All of those experiences put me in a position to represent Mojaloop to a very diverse set of stakeholders.”
How has Mojaloop grown over time?
“Our team is much larger than I originally anticipated. We have a technology team, a deployment team working in the marketplace, and the operational functions of the foundation.
The other area that has really changed is the number of countries in the adoption phase. Implementing a payment system at a country level involves central banks, ministries, mobile network operators, commercial banks, and funders.
It can take two to three years to go from interest to going live because of the number of stakeholders involved. We had to invest more than expected in awareness and education — training central banks and governments on both the benefits of the technology and how to implement it.”
How many live deployments are there today?
“We’ve had live deployments in Rwanda, Liberia, and The Gambia.
Rwanda is one of the most advanced implementations. Liberia went live late last year, and The Gambia has also recently gone live.
We probably have between eight and twelve countries that could go live this year that are currently in the implementation process.”
What makes the Mojaloop Foundation team and community unique?
“I think the first thing I’m most proud of is the team we built. We span eight time zones, but we have a very tight-knit and highly skilled team.
Everyone in the foundation has a role in either evangelizing Mojaloop, adopting it, or maintaining and enhancing the code base.
We also built a strong community. We started with a few hundred people and have now formalized governance, collaboration rules, and contribution processes.
What’s stayed constant is the commitment. Most of the developers and contributors who joined early on are still with us today, and they’ve brought in new participants. That consistency and devotion to the mission has been very strong.”
How are you feeling as you step into retirement?
“It’s very emotional for me to say goodbye to Mojaloop. I built this team from scratch, and I’ve spent a lot of time with them across different regions.
I’m looking forward to taking a break and stepping back from the travel, but I’ll definitely be watching from afar.
We’re at a point where we have many projects in the pipeline and several coming online. These are long-cycle projects, so I’m very curious to see what the impact looks like three to five years from now — how much we’ve moved the needle for financial inclusion.”
