The Mojaloop Foundation recently hosted its PI-18 OSS Community Meeting – the first IN-PERSON meeting since January, 2020. It was wonderful to bring the community together face-to-face in Arusha, Tanzania, for four days of engaging business and technical sessions, workstreams, workshops, collaboration and networking. The agenda was chock full, and we heard from a wide range of presenters. All the talks are now available on our YouTube channel in our PI-18 playlist, and below we’ve pulled out a few session highlights to share, including:
Importance of Real-time Interoperable Payments in Tanzania
On day one, Innocent Ephraim of Financial Sector Deepening Trust (FSDT), led a panel with Isack Nchunda of Airtel Money Tanzania, Miller Abel of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Benjamin Dotto of e-Government Agency in Tanzania. The group reviewed the importance of real-time payments in Tanzania as well as a few key challenges, including the difficulties of cross-border payments, ensuring sustainable working business models and providing those in remote villages with low-cost access to any bank anywhere. They also examined real-time payments through a Mojaloop lens and reviewed the technology’s level one principles. Watch the full discussion here.
Payment System Pricing Tool
Later that day, we heard from Cici Northup, Elizabeth McQuerry and Bethany May of Glenbrook about a tool they developed called the Inclusive Instant Payment Systems (IIPS) Estimator, which estimates costs to develop different types of payment systems. In addition to explaining the development of the tool, the presenters spoke about the four distinct approaches to building payment system platforms: vendor licensed platforms, proprietary build platforms, Mojaloop platforms that license other non-OSS components from vendors and Mojaloop platforms that build other non-OSS components in-house. The Glenbrook team covered implementation costs of the options, the go-live estimation and other key factors to consider when making payment system decisions. Check out the entire talk on YouTube.
Mojaloop Deployment Experience in Myanmar (Hub Operator’s Perspective)
Later in the week, Thynn Win of Thitsaworks gave us an update on the deployment of Mojaloop in Myanmar. She spoke about the company’s mission of powering financial inclusion and transforming societies where many have limited or no access to credit or the financial literacy needed to rise out of poverty. She shared a bit about Thitsaworks’s solutions to that challenge, one being a digitization effort called WynePay, a payment switch run on Mojaloop. Learn more about WynePay and Thitsaworks’s efforts in Myanmar here.
Offline Transactions: Introducing Payala and how to Integrate with Mojaloop
Later that day, Julian Finn of Payala spoke about offline transactions and introduced the company’s technology. Payala is a secure, resilient and inclusive peer-to-peer payment system that operates effectively in intermittently offline scenarios. Finn covered how the technology works, who it was developed for and how it can integrate with Mojaloop. Watch the full presentation to learn more.
Of course, that is just a sample of the many educational and informative sessions that were shared over the course of the event. You can view the full playlist of sessions on our YouTube channel.
Whether you participated live in Tanzania, joined virtually from your home base or are just catching up via YouTube, we hope you found the PI-18 OSS Community Meeting to be as informative and engaging as we did.
We’re already looking forward to our next community meetings, and we hope to see you again soon! Mark your calendars for PI-19, a virtual-only event scheduled for July 26-28, 2022 and PI-20, set for October 24-27 in Zanzibar, Tanzania.
Until then, stay up to date on all things Mojaloop by following us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
