The Mojaloop Foundation’s newly launched global partner program brings together organizations committed to building inclusive instant payment systems (IIPS) and advancing financial inclusion. Among the program’s founding partners is the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), an organization dedicated to enabling trusted digital identity for businesses worldwide. To learn more about this collaboration, which is particularly relevant to the Mojaloop Foundation’s merchant use case, we spoke with Clare Rowley, Head of Business Operations at GLEIF.
Enabling Identity for Businesses — Not Just Individuals
While much of the global conversation around digital identity focuses on individuals, GLEIF brings attention to another essential pillar: legal entity identity. As Rowley explains, “When we talk about identity, people often think of individuals — someone seeking access to health care or a bank account. But legal entities need identity too.”
Whether applying for a loan, registering as a supplier, or conducting cross-border transactions, small businesses and merchants must prove they are trustworthy partners. GLEIF manages the Global Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) system, which assigns each business a unique, validated identifier that links to an open, publicly accessible company record. That record includes essential reference data, such as business name, legal address, and ownership structure.
Originally developed after the 2008 financial crisis to bring transparency to capital markets, the LEI has evolved into a global standard — used in more than 200 financial regulations across jurisdictions. As Rowley puts it, “It’s like an international ID card for businesses — verified, standard, and usable across borders.”
A Public Good That Builds Trust
The Global LEI system is the infrastructure that enables LEIs to be issued to legal entities around the world through a federated network of LEI issuing organizations. These organizations are accredited by GLEIF to provide services such as registration, renewal, and data updates, and they act as the main point of contact for legal entities seeking to obtain an LEI. Each issued LEI links to a verified company identity record stored in the Global LEI Index — a freely accessible, open data pool available to anyone, anywhere.
By providing identity infrastructure as a public good, GLEIF’s model complements Mojaloop’s open source approach. “Our role is not to replace local business registries or rules,” Rowley noted. “Instead, we provide an interoperability layer — one that supports machine-to-machine communication and cross-border discovery of trusted business entities.”
In this way, LEIs support payment transparency, straight-through processing, and anti-money laundering efforts — without introducing proprietary constraints or fees.
Finding Common Ground in Financial Inclusion
GLEIF’s collaboration with Mojaloop emerged around 2020 through global regulatory and policy forums focused on payment transparency and interoperability. Both organizations participated in initiatives led by the Financial Stability Board and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), where LEI’s value in cross-border payment efficiency became increasingly clear.
In Mojaloop-based payment systems, payments can be initiated using an alias, such as a phone number. Working with GLEIF will enable merchants, SMEs or corporates to receive or send payments using LEIs.
“When Mojaloop began exploring cross-border interoperability, identity became a central topic,” Rowley recalls. “National ID systems work well domestically, but they often don’t translate internationally for machine-to-machine processing. That’s where the LEI comes in — it offers a global reference for identifying merchants and other legal entities in a machine-readable, standard format.”
There is also value in exploring domestic use cases, particularly in markets with multiple disconnected registries — something the Mojaloop Foundation plans to do in the future.
GLEIF also saw Mojaloop as a natural collaborator — not only because of its open source philosophy and focus on financial inclusion but also because both organizations understand that identity is foundational infrastructure. “The LEI system is a digital public good,” Rowley said. “We believe access to verified identity should be available to all businesses, not just those registered in national databases.”
Unlocking Cross-Border Participation for MSMEs
The practical opportunity lies in enabling merchants — especially micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) — to participate in digital economies more easily, both domestically and internationally. Many of these businesses operate informally or are not easily located in national registries, making it hard for them to complete cross-border transactions or meet partner due diligence requirements.
GLEIF and Mojaloop are exploring how the LEI could be integrated into Mojaloop’s merchant registry framework. This would allow MSMEs that don’t already have an LEI — or even a conventional business profile — to onboard into digital payment ecosystems with a globally trusted identity.
“This is where we see real alignment,” said Rowley. “Mojaloop is enabling open, inclusive instant payments. We’re enabling open, inclusive business identity. Together, we can bring merchants into the digital economy in a way that supports transparency, compliance, and economic opportunity.”
Laying a Foundation for Future Growth
While GLEIF does not operate payment networks directly, it actively supports policy discussions on identity and financial inclusion. Through its partnership with Mojaloop, GLEIF is helping demonstrate that digital public goods — when applied thoughtfully — can fill crucial gaps in global infrastructure.
Rowley believes this work is just beginning. “We’re not solving every piece of the financial inclusion puzzle. For example, we’re not involved in providing personal identity and solving the legal issues that come with data privacy and sharing information across borders. But by focusing on merchant identity, we’re solving a piece that’s often overlooked — and that has real implications for economic development and trust.”
She adds, “If we can streamline how merchants identify themselves and build relationships — locally or across borders — we unlock opportunities for them to grow, participate in global supply chains, and strengthen their local economies.”
A Shared Vision for Open, Inclusive Systems
GLEIF’s inclusion in the Mojaloop partner program illustrates a shared vision: financial ecosystems should be open, accessible, and interoperable. By combining Mojaloop’s interoperable instant payments architecture with GLEIF’s trusted identity layer, both organizations are helping create a digital public infrastructure that works for everyone — especially those historically excluded from the digital economy.
As Mojaloop expands into more markets, partnerships like this one ensure the supporting systems are not just technically sound, but also inclusive by design.
