Interledger Foundation ILP-Enabled Financial Services Grants

 Grants for the research and development of ILP-enabled financial services for money transfer.

The Interledger Foundation, based in the United States, was founded with the mission to increase access to digital financial services by advocating for the adoption of an open-source, currency-agnostic payments network, powered by the Interledger Protocol (ILP).

It seeks to support ideas and people that use ILP to contribute to building equity and inclusion within a global interoperable payments network and the development of consumer-facing services that will activate as ILP nodes. Its ultimate goal is to create an ecosystem that permits frictionless payments and micropayments across currencies and ledgers connecting everyone, regardless of identity, geography, or income.

Its Global Strategy for Change seeks to:

• Support research and development of financial systems in vulnerable areas.
• Fund innovative solutions geared towards uplifting underrepresented populations.
• Foster an ecosystem that supports a paradigm shift in payment systems.
• Create a robust and active Interledger community that grows together.
• Enrich talent pipelines to bring new voices and perspectives into the fintech space.

The Foundation’s ILP-Enabled Financial Services Grant supports the development of concepts for ILP-enabled services exploring innovative open-source solutions to address clearly defined problems, such as digital wallet services, online banks and other ILP-enabled software that enables money transfer.

The grant is a maximum of $75,000 to fund the assessment and evaluation of the possibility of developing a compelling concept for an innovative, open-source solution.

For the 2023 Call for Proposals, applicants can choose between two timeline options, to execute and complete their proposed project:

• Three months: A fast-track option for entities already working on a financial service but require a financial boost to conduct research to enable its ability to move to prototype. Applicants should already have a use case for, and be able to demonstrate, ongoing work in producing an ILP-enabled financial service and understanding of the financial requirements and policies governing the proposed service in the respective jurisprudence.
• Six months: A longer timeframe to will give applicants the time to develop and conduct a full research project looking at many aspects of a potential solution. Applicants should be seeking to launch research to develop a compelling case to develop an ILP-enabled financial service. The focus of this opportunity will center around gathering information on the path forward on the financial regulatory policies and rules the service will exist in.

Applicants must also set out the following critical deliverables:

• An understanding and path forward on the financial regulatory policies and rules the proposed solution will exist in.
• A technology plan on how the project will use the Interledger Protocol.
• A practical work plan for producing a prototype including key collaborators.
• A preliminary budget for the cost of a prototype phase.