Mojaloop Community Central

Kim
Kim

Posted on

 

Mojaloop PI-21 Daily Wrap-up (Day #1)

Welcome to Day #1 of the Mojaloop PI-21 Community event in Kigali, Rwanda and online

As a reminder, wear your Mojaloop t-shirt, and we will do a group photo immediately after the last session tomorrow.

Important Links:
• Mojaloop Presentations: https://mojaloop.io/decks
• Documentation: http://mojaloop.io/documentation
• Slack: https://join.slack.com/t/mojaloop/shared_invite/zt-1qy6f3fs0-xYfqfIHJ6zFfNXb0XRpiHw
• Mojaloop Code (Github): https://github.com/mojaloop

Session Details:
• Introduction to Level One Principles
o Matt Bohan, Gates Foundation
o Slide Deck
o Level One Project Goal
 Low Price to Users – positively impact the lives of poor people
 Low Cost - useful
 Safe - Inclusive
 Used – Ubiquitous
o Mojaloop Goals
 We want payments to reach everyone
 We believe that RTRPS are the lowest cost way to make that happen
 We believe that our L1P principles help drive the lowest cost
 Advance the industry
• Similar features, capabilities and rules
• Connections between implementations
• Serve the needs of the people, and of businesses
 Experience from the markets and your broad base of implementations and prospects
 Sharing information
 Security and fraud management
• Gender research
• Ecosystem development

• Welcome
o Paula Hunter, Executive Director Mojaloop Foundation
o Slide Deck
 Mission: Increase financial inclusion by empowering organizations creating interoperable payments systems to enable digital financial services for all.
 600+ community members, in 47 countries
 The Mojaloop Foundation, with the funding and support of our sponsors will continue to advance the features and capabilities of the platform and support the community committed to our mission.
 The Team
• Simeon Oriko, Director of Community
• Steve Haley, Market Development and Partnerships
• Desire Kachenji, Manager of Grants and Partnerships
• Paul Makin, Product Management
• Megan Cannon, Community Operations
 Top Priorities
• Deployment Success
• Product Alignment to Market Requirements
• Continued Growth in our Community
 Steve Haley, Mojaloop Roadmap: https://docs.mojaloop.io/community/mojaloop-roadmap.html
• Make it easier to deploy Mojaloop
• Make sure deployments have every opportunity to make themselves profitable
• Connect to other payments services in the ecosystem
• These three pillars are underpinned by a fourth workstream, that of continuous development of a quality product.
o Robert Ochola, CEO of AfricaNenda
 Highlight work done at the CCHub
 Bootcamp on the Mojaloop Open Source Software for Fintech Companies and Open Source Developers
• 1. Fintech companies based in Kigali
• 2. Open-Source enthusiasts and developers based in Kigali
• 3. ccHub community members
 15 Mojaloop Deployments Completed
 Empower the next generation of SI’s and engineers in Rwanda

• Word from RISA - Innocent Muhizi
o Importance of Payments in Rwanda
o Open Source opportunity
o Power of merchants/payments
 Innovation
 Data insights
 Analyze trends for policy makers
o Cross-border
 Enable of cross-border payments is significant and Mojaloop can enable this
 Addressing the inhibitors and addressing solutions
o Encourage everyone to participate and be willing to fail and learn

• Tanzanian Instant Payment System: A discussion with the Bank of Tanzania delivery team on the journey to build TIPS
o Jane Stroucken, Infitx
 Innocent Ephraim, FSDT
 Mutashobya Mushumbusi (Muta), Bank of Tanzania (BoT)
 Elibariki A. Sekajingo (Eli), Bank of Tanzania (BoT)
o Can you go back to the beginning and reflect on the problems that necessitated the introduction of TIPS? What are the steps that you had on this journey?
 Muta: There was challenges in banking: It was taking too long for services, it was costly for users and there was integration challenges
 Muta: We took the time to understand the needs of Tanzania and determine approaches. Created a roadmap of where we were and where we wanted to reach.
o Can you share the different challenges that you faced during the implementation that may have been prevented had you done things differently? How different?
 Eli: One of the challenges was the onboarding of participants took longer than planned (have over 45 banks).

 Challenge for some to adopt and understand the flow and ensure this was planned for and budget for
 General adoption required to win their goodwill, working with regulators was a challenge as we struggled to build something for everyone
 As the implementor timelines are not accurate as there is a longer process for bringing people along; understanding the benefit of the process is sometimes harder for the receipts as they are focused on the end goal
o TIPS is considered one of the first national implementations of RTP, how would other countries have first-hand experience/learning from TIPS implementation?(Muta)
 Muta: TIPs and BoT are open to sharing our experiences; We will be here for the entire week to share our experiences and learn about how we can help support and partnership; We plan to document our journey so others can learn more about instant payments and avoid some mistakes.

• Building the Perfect Pilot – panelist discussion
o Steve Haley, Mojaloop Foundation
 Himi Deen Toure, Prime Minister Office Prime Minister - Guinea
 Afazad Kalisa, PMO RSwitch Ltd
 Nyi Aye, CEO ThitsaWorks Solutions Myanmar Co., Ltd.
 John Muthoria
o Pilot and POCs: How do we cut down the time for pilots to learn what we need to and move to the next phase:
 Nyi: POC vs Pilot. POC is internal – Pilot is when we expanded beyond our company and involved and testing with real live money with selective users.
 Himi: Financial Shared services – there are 20 banks with 180 services, 25 MFIS, 5 operators for 14 milion people – with different stakeholders, it is not easy to align them on the same goals. Starting the pilot we had discussions with the prime minister to get them involved. 2) they had conversations to set the goals for the POC, we learned from AfricanNenda
 Afazad: POC is a HOW we will implement change or an idea to prove this out. Once you move to pilot and is working within a period of time, you can move it out further. The pilot for us was 2 years. The pilot is a monitoring phase.
 Steve: POC as technical testing, Pilot is in a production environment for financial institutions
o What are we trying to learn:
 Niyi: The need for instant payments is very real but there is a greater need for interopablity. Microfinance loans and support for vendors was needed in the begging
 Himi: We have 25 microfinances in Guinea and many don’t have a core bank systems.

 Afazad: once there are multiple stakeholders involved and they get alignment we can discuss interopability and its meaning – but we typicaly have different opinions on how to implement it.
 John: Relationship between DFSP and the vendor – you need to first convince the DFSP that this implementation is critical – so they can then discuss and convince their vendors.
o What are some of the challenges of integrating different levels of DFSPs
 Niyi: Created several levels of advisory – all the organizations signed a commitment and we ha regular meetings with them. The core group we ensured they became part of the journey
o What involvement does the central bank have in the POC? How much real testing should happen at the POC level?
 Himi: In Guinea, financial inclusion is challenging. For our POC we aligned different stakeholders and we established a steering committee to ensure involvement at the highest level. At this stage we did not include everyone and we only picked 8 partners: 2 banks, 2 MFIs, 2 Mobile, etc so show quick wins first. We start slow with partners and then built out a national system
 Afazad: Discussed the importance of scheme rules that gov’t the actions, ensure security, Understanding the advantages of the central bank. The team looked at the opportunities and helped to enure the goals for stakeholders and participants. The end user is the most important player and show them what they are gaining from this (cost, time, convenience)

• Mojaloop Accelerator Program Progress and SI’s Contribution
o Desire Kachenje, Mojaloop Foundation
o Murakoze Wallet
o Slide Deck
 Alain Kajangwe, WiredIn LTD
 What is Murakoze
• A customer experience rating & feedback platform
• A service Queue Management System
 Why a Wallet?
• Moving away from Cash/SIM
• To hide Payer account information from Payee
• Ability to pay from my different wallets and accounts
 Implementation Plan/details
• Wallet to airtel money, and others
• RTP-based solution
• 3rd Party payment initiated
• Leveraged the Mojaloop Payments Flow
 Demo: Blandine Kaneza
• Provided demo on how they implemented code
• Knowledge on Mojaloop and contributed back to Open Source
• Made some major improvements to the code on payments manager an the hub portal
 Challenges
• Limited UI customizations options, this is on some of the options like. Requires a lot of effort to make user interface changes that should normally be given in environment configurations of application configurations.
• Not so clear mapping between fspids and they are actual generic names. We would like to be able to have fspid but able to be mapped to a human readable FSP name like MTN, Bank of Kigali and so on.
• APIs are not very well documented. Sometimes we would struggle to understand what the actual fields mean and that wouldn't necessarily be explicitly called out in API documentations (Swaggers).
• Hard for us to understand fees structure in Mojaloop. Fun fact (We still don’t know the difference between payeeFspFee & payeeFspCommission)
o Orion Systems Update
 Jean Claude Karasira, PADEBO Consulting LTD
 Slide Deck
 Attended the accelerator program
 Do deployment of mini-loop, payments manager
 Developed the Payments manager core connectors and setup an Account
• Account Lookup
• Quoting service
• P2P transfer
 Continue with bulk services, and merchant payments

• Interoperability Case Study (Rwanda & Kenya)
o Michael Mbuthia
o Slide Deck and Video
o Discussed plans on how they did this
 Answering the why
o Kenya
 Interoperability Journey
• 90% payments are still in cash
• 10% payments using cashless systems
 Value Proposition
• Innovation
• Efficiency and Cost
• Customer Value
• Risk Mgmt
• Financial Inclusion
 PesaLink: numbers after the launch
• The product morphed into S witch
• Available to any licensed DFSP in the country. This includes banks and licensed non-banks
o Rwanda
 Challenge: Currently if you are an MTN Mobile money subscriber you are unable to pay an Airtel Money subscriber
 Blue-print: Centralized National Switch, available to any licensed DFSP in the country. This includes banks and licensed non-banks.
• Aligned to Level One Principles
 Developed Use Cases – and building the merchant payments on the Mojaloop System
 6 months for eKash
• 1.3 million users registered
• 146% monthly growth
• 1.1 million transactions
o Recap: Key elements for Successful IIPS
 Why: what is the gap in the market?
 Governance Model: A clear and fair governance model to balance cooperation with competition among participants
 Economic Model: An economic model that incentivizes all stakeholders
 Operational Model: An operational model that safely and reliably connects participants:
• Sustainable
• low cost
• “Low to acquire, deploy and operate”

• Setting Up an operations Team
o Pyae Phyo Lwin, ThitsaWorks
o Slide Deck
o Mojaloop Deployment and DFSP Onboarding experience in Myanmar (Hub Operator’s perspective)
 Team Setup: Setting up organization structure, job scope, recruitment, training and ensuring resources
 Readiness for Onboarding: learn API, scheme rules, define testing, workflow and develop onboard checklist, create test plan
 Readiness For Settlement: Make agreement of settlement steps between hub operator and settlement bank, Define the Net Debit Cap, scheduled settlement time, Develop SOP for daily settlement process, report specificiation and finance portal
 Customer Service: Create service desk portal, Define general issue types to add in portal, Prepare service desk user guideline, support workflow, Develop SOP for customer service process
o Experience of Onboarding DFSPs
 Onboarding steps: discussion w/ DFSPs, Testing, Feasibility checks, integration specs, conduct testing (end-to-end testing critical)
 Challenges
• MFI (3 to 6 months)
o Phone number standard format in MFI backend system

o Repetitive tasks like credentials and payment type creation when the restore process in MFI’s core banking system
o Re-communicate with MFI for Incorrect payment type configuration (Payment type deletion (or) renaming in MFI’s core banking system)
• Wallet (1 to 6 months)
o Lack of Amount reserved feature (2-phase commit) – causes frequent refund process
o Communication challenge on requesting repetitive tasks regarding the changes in MFI logos and names

• Common
o Require proper guidance on clear understanding of DFSP’s API documentation
o Lesson Learned from Friendly User Testing (1.0 & 2.0)
 Insufficient liquidity of DFSPs
 Insufficient balance error (Wallet has limited minimum balance of 1000Ks in the client’s wallet)
 Amount edition in Wallet
 Certificate expiration
 Wallet 5-minute business rule
 API issue
 PVC issue related to TechOps
 Credentials permission
 Core Banking System EOD/EOM process
 Connection issue
 Incorrect Payment Type configuration
 Incorrect Core Connector configuration
 Issue related with wallet update version

• Finding Harmony: Establishing Interoperable Standards for Payments amongst DPIs for G2P and Social Protection
o Slide Deck
o Ed Cable - (Mifos Initiative)
 Karim Jindani - (Paysys Labs)
 Wes Brown (DIAL)
 Vijay Mauree (ITU)
 Vijay Vujjini (Co-Develop Fund)
o Goals
 Visions for Standards and Interoperability & the Status in Harmonizing Them
• Be aware and informed of these ongoing efforts, how they're being aligned, and their latest progress.
 Payments Building Block - Closer Look at One Standard & the Role of DPGs & DPIs
• Understand the APIs being defined for the Pay-BB standard, and considerations that were made in the design of the API and how DPGs/DPIs are instantiating that standard.
 Looking to the Future - Practical ways DPGs/DPIs can interact with the standards
and collaborate effectively
• Discover what's next and the impact these standards will have on catalyzing adoption and fueling collaboration.
o G2P Connect: Mission of this effort
 A technology architecture blueprint with a plug-and-play architecture (allowing for choice of components) with built in privacy & security
 A set of integration specifications to ensure interoperability across the systems supporting G2P delivery
 An integration sandbox to support the development of solutions adhering to the blueprint and specifications
o GovStack
 Multi-stakeholder, community driven initiative, focused on accelerating national digital transformation worldwide, and drawing expertise from contributors across the private sector, civic society and governments all over the world.
 What is GovStack: deliver reusable digital services at scale with a greater return on investment.
o Payments BB
 Vision for payments building block
 Provides an architecture and functional specifications for implementing G2P and P2G payments
 Leverages digital public goods
 Based on open source software
 Provides a standard set of Open APIs for implementing G2P and P2G payments
o Context
 The GovStack initiative is seeking to implement a demonstration/Proof-of-Concept (PoC) of the “Payments” Building Block (PAY-BB) as part of its Sandbox environment.
 The Payments Building Block consists of components that enable multiple government payments use cases in a generic manner.
 The actual use cases include Government to Person (G2P) and Person to Government (P2G).
 The payments BB cover components that can be used to deliver the key functionalities and to connect to existing systems in the market, but does not contemplate building a new payments scheme
o Future
 Implementing Standards
• What role do DPGs play in instantiating them? How is that occurring right now? How can DPGs practically get involved?
 Collaboration
• How will these standards enable better collaboration? Any good examples that you've seen to date?
 Vendor Ecosystem
• How are you addressing the challenges to adoption, maintainability and sustainability of projects and solutions?
 Adoption & Country Engagement
• How will your efforts scale adoption? How are governments and multilaterals involved? How do we drive proper stewardship & contribution from governments?
 Sustainability
• What risks/challenges come from increased interest? How are you ensuring your efforts translates into ensuring health, vitaliy, maintainability of DPGs and not just more standards to adhere to?
• Wrap-up
o Steve Haley – business day wrap-up
 Understanding lessons learned
 Importance and learnings from POCs and pilots
 Reduce the cost and the barrier to participation.
 Importance of merchant payments
o Simeon
 Workstream report-outs/updates

Latest comments (0)