We messaged the community at the start of November about the proposed Mojaloop Product Council, based on this concept note: Mojaloop Product Council

The ambition was to create a council formed from adopters experiencing the software first hand, thought leaders in the industry with market experience & the technology companies supporting adoption in market because the  Mojaloop Foundation success will be realized when it delivers value to those doing the hard work to create last mile solutions for financially excluded citizens.

The response to this call for applicants has delivered on that promise. Applicants ranged from product people at our existing adopters & members, such as Mowali and Google; NGOs, consultancies who support donors, MFIs, credit unions, and NGOs; hub operators, payments integrators & product companies who understand the realities of the need to work within the ecosystem & the role new standards could have to play. I’m similarly excited for the potential of the roadmap to investigate adjacencies in shared services for adopters through working with fraud and risk management companies such as Sybrin, credit scoring such as TransUnion & biometrics identity solutions such as Genkey.

Applicants are similarly geographically diverse: from USA, Paris, Singapore, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Kenya, South Africa, India.

We hope that we continue to grow the voice and diversity of Product People in the community as we work collaboratively to deliver the kind of impact we all want to achieve.

At the highest level, success at the Product work can be described this way:

  1. We identify & plan the right problems to solve & validate our thinking early.
  2. We can sufficiently shape work in a way that priority contributions are simple to ask for
  3. We know how new work gets supported into market and adopted
  4. We ensure we learn with adopters.

The foundation values an open forum for all who want to join the detailed discussions at a product level – please contact us if you want to understand how, particularly if you believe you would like to participate in shaping detailed scoping work on any prioritized work – an incredibly valuable community contribution.   All the institutions above will be invited to our kick-off council workshop, and we hope that team members will roll their sleeves up and dig into the detail.

The core Product Council is formed from organizations who can help ensure that the right work can also be resourced by the community and that it can be taken into market and adopted. This model will be revisited in H2 2021.  

The core Product Council will be formed of:

  • Chetan Manjeshwar, Google
  • Pierre Combelles, Orange
  • Kadidia Niangado, Mowali
  • Greg McCormick, Sybrin
  • Karim Jindani, PaySysLabs
  • Steve Haley, Modusbox
  • Charles Kimani, Tamarix
  • Ed Cable, MIFOS
  • Rob Madziva, Digital Mobile Africa
  • Renjith Palamattom, Applied Payments
  • Doris Ung, JP Morgan Chase
  • Jacques Voogt, Reach Payments Services
  • Anup Singh, Microsave
  • Paul Makin, Trouver
  • Seun Owoeye, IPSL (the home of Pesalink)
  • Samuel Tayengwa, TransUnion