At the Mojaloop Foundation, development has always been a key centerpiece of our work. Since the launch of our open source project in 2017, we’ve been proud to hold 15 developer community events. They’ve been great opportunities to hear from the technical community and get into the technical challenges and details of digital finance. Now, we want to build on that technical foundation and engage with the business community across the industry to advance our collective work. We know it takes a vibrant, multifaceted ecosystem to deploy Mojaloop and increase Financial Inclusion around the world, and we are excited to work with both our technical and business supporters to further that cause.

To that end, we recently concluded our first Mojaloop Foundation Business Conference, Winning with Mojaloop: Running a Business on Open Source. The three-day event was packed with great sessions that looked at everything from why you should partner with Mojaloop, to the payment platform landscape to connecting organizations with common goals through Open Source. I hope you were able to tune in to the event. If not, or if you just want a recap, you can access all of the speaker sessions on our YouTube channel.

To get us started on day one, we heard an inspiring Ted Talk from Kosta Peric, Chair of the Mojaloop Foundation and Deputy Director, Financial Service for the Poor, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He laid out the work of the Mojaloop Foundation and provided an important perspective on why inclusive payments are so important to connecting 1.7 billion new customers, setting the tone for the rest of the event. From there, the sessions kicked off and we moved into the important content that brought us all together and will help pave the way forward for financial inclusion. Here are a few highlights.

Session: Payment Platforms Landscape

Willy Lim, Solutions Architect, R3, explored the dynamic, evolving instant payment landscape, covering industry trends, current ecosystem models, gaps and challenges, cases for open source and some of the innovation that’s coming in the space. Catch the whole talk here.

Session: Why Contribute to a Mojaloop Project

Simeon Oriko, Director of Community at the Mojaloop Foundation, led a panel discussion with Warren Carew, VP Payment Solutions, ModusBox and Greg McCormick, Chief Strategic Business Officer at Sybrin, that delved into why businesses should contribute to the Mojaloop project. The discussion was targeted toward businesses and organizations trying to figure out how to meaningfully contribute to the project and supplied some key participation benefits and examples. Tune into the discussion here.

Session: Partnering with the Mojaloop Foundation

For this session, I teamed up with Simeon Oriko to discuss how to engage with the Foundation. While the work of the developer community is an important part of our engagement, there are other ways for businesses and organizations to get involved. This presentation dove into what the Mojaloop Foundation is, how it operates and how to collaborate with us. Find out how to get involved.

Session: Open Innovation to Solve Big Problems

Lucy Harris of the Digital Public Goods Alliance shared an interesting presentation on using open innovation to solve big problems and what makes open innovation successful in this arena. Three big factors she touched on are adaptability, transparency and addressing common problems. She also dove into what a Digital Public Good is: “open source technologies or content, including software, data, standards or AI models that have been built to adhere to relevant best practices laws and standards, do no harm and advance the sustainable development goals.” Watch the full talk to learn more.

Session: Why Open Source for Payments Infrastructure

In this session, I moderated a panel discussion between Jo Ann Barefoot of the Alliance for Innovative Regulation, Amanda Brock of OpenUK and Gabriele Columbro of FINOS about open source projects in the digital payments space. Each brought a unique perspective to the conversation and shared their take on why open source is a good option for the payments sector. Check out their thoughts here.

Session: How Global Payments Players Get Involved in Mojaloop: Visa’s Perspective

In this session, Steve Haley, Economic Development Manager, ModusBox, sat down with Nat Scheer, Head of Real-time Payments, Asia Pacific, Visa. They chatted about the real-time payments space in Asia, Visa’s perspective on working with non-traditional financial institutions, the possibilities for bringing real-time payments and traditional credit card ecosystems together and more. Listen to the full conversation here.

Session: Helping a Scheme Get Started with Mojaloop

Steve Haley led this panel, which looked at how to get schemes up and running with Mojaloop. He was joined by Kadidia Niangado of Mowali, Nyi Aye of ThitsaWorks and Drew Johnson of ModusBox. Together they discussed how to get started with projects, how Mojaloop can help and some of the obstacles that can come up, based on their own experiences. Get the details here.

And that only scratches the surface of what was covered during this informative and engaging three-day event! We hope you were able to join or check out some of the sessions on demand.

Connect with us here to join the Mojaloop community and learn more about how you can make an impact. Be sure to follow the Mojaloop Foundation on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for all the latest.