Foundation launches payments software

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has launched an open-source payments software to provide interoperability between financial institutions and payment service providers.

The foundation’s deputy director of financial services for the poor, Kosta Peric, said the new software called Mojaloop is aimed at allowing inter-operability among digital payments.

“Interoperability of digital payments has been the toughest hurdle for the financial services industry to overcome. With Mojaloop, our technology partners have finally achieved a solution that can apply to any service, and we invite banks and the payments industry to explore and test this tool,” said Mr Peric.

The foundation has invited players in the banking and payments industries to test the system. The software is available free-of-cost, for software developers to adapt and banks, financial service providers and companies to implement. It says tool can overcome barriers that banks and providers face in interoperability.

The new Mojaloop application was developed under the Gates’s Level One Project, which is an umbrella programme for the foundation’s work with the unbanked people.