Ripple’s founding vision is to enable the world to move value like information does today—a concept we refer to as the Internet of Value (IoV). This vision remains essential to Ripple’s foundation and contributes to its driving motivation to create greater economic opportunity for all.
Creating economic fairness and opportunity for the unbanked and vulnerable populations is Ripple’s highest social impact priority—a natural extension of Ripple’s fundamental business, which is making cross-border payments faster, cheaper and more reliable and accessible for hundreds of millions of consumers and businesses globally.
Achieving universal financial inclusion is not a new aspiration, but a mission that many organizations, including Ripple, have been working towards for years. There has been significant progress—systemic barriers such as outdated payment infrastructures and challenges to interoperability are now being solved through emerging technologies, like blockchain and crypto. The penetration of mobile phones and digital wallets are increasing dramatically, enabling greater access to financial mobile applications. In addition, extreme poverty is reducing globally, with a significant decline in the share of the world’s population living on less than $1.90 a day—down from nearly 35% in 1987 to 10% today. These are powerful tailwinds.
However, the fact still remains that today’s global financial system does not equitably meet the needs of the 1.7B unbanked population, especially in regions like sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and East and Southeastern Asia.
This is where the Mojaloop Foundation comes in.
Mojaloop is a powerful open-source software platform that promises to improve the interoperability of payments systems, making it easier and more affordable to send and receive money, especially in emerging markets. Since its inception in 2017, Ripple has been involved with the foundation providing technical advice and engineering support.
Today, Ripple is joining the Mojaloop Foundation as a Sponsor member. We are proud to continue our partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and to collaborate with fellow Mojaloop Sponsor members including Coil Technologies and Google in working towards a more inclusive future where everyone, everywhere can access digital financial services needed to connect to the global economy.
Ending financial exclusion is achievable through a combination of innovative technology, market-based solutions and multi-sector partnerships. A thriving ecosystem of developers working to expand access to financial services—and market-based incentives to spur them on—is also a necessary ingredient. The Mojaloop Foundation is committed to working with stakeholders in places where we can make the greatest impact.
We look forward to participating in the foundation’s efforts to engage and involve local developers and entrepreneurs—and to collaborate with central banks, financial institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—in harnessing the power of the Mojaloop platform to improve payment ecosystems.
