Digital money is no longer just emerging—it is being intentionally designed. Universities are becoming key environments for shaping the future of financial systems, training the next generation of technologists, policymakers, and innovators. As digital finance evolves, academic institutions play a critical role in researching, testing, and teaching equitable, secure, and interoperable systems, with support from initiatives like those of the Interledger Foundation.
Web Monetization is now integrated into Google’s Offerwall, letting users directly support publishers through seamless micropayments alongside ads or surveys.
The Interledger Foundation launched “Interledger on Campus,” a global mini-grant program offering up to $5,000 for university student clubs to run short projects exploring open payments, financial access, and interoperability.
Africa’s payment systems struggle not because of missing technology but because of flawed business models and commercial design. To achieve adoption, systems must prioritize free P2P transfers, better accessibility, and simple proxy-based addressing, alongside regulatory reforms that overcome incumbent resistance.
The Interledger Foundation has awarded a 2025 Digital Financial Services Grant to Fliqa, a Slovenia-based fintech integrating Open Payments and the Interledger Protocol into its open banking solutions. The partnership will help expand real-time, low-cost, interoperable payment options for merchants and advance more open and inclusive digital financial infrastructure.
The internet isn’t truly free: we “pay” with our time, attention, and data, which fuel platforms designed to capture and manipulate us. Alternatives like Web Monetization aim to restore privacy, fairness, and control by letting users directly support creators.
The Interledger Foundation has awarded a $200,000 Grant for the Web to the Social Web Foundation to research sustainable revenue and governance models for decentralized, community-run social platforms, with a focus on creators, publishers, and federated servers.
The Interledger engineering team spent a week in Shanghai teaming up with KaiOS to plan the next phase of POS and Interledger Wallet integration. Between serious tech decisions, flip phone nostalgia, bubble tea, and surprise robots, the trip blended real engineering progress with great people, culture, and a lot of fun.
As we come to the end of the year and review the past 2 months, we see that we have continued to make a significant impact in helping to close the financial exclusion gap worldwide. The surge in digital financial services is a major enabler as we continue to adopt services such as mobile banking, mobile money accounts, internet banking, and digital payments. Many have called this period a breakthrough moment for financial inclusion.
The Interledger Foundation has awarded Alliance of Digital Finance and Fintech Associations to be the first recipients of an Interledger Policy Activation Grant. This grant will enable them to lead a new global initiative to make Instant Payment Systems more inclusive and accessible to fintechs and non-banks.
At the 2025 Interledger Hackathon in Mexico City, 47 teams developed practical solutions for interoperable payments, with winners tackling global remittances, device-less payments, education-linked funding, and conversational finance to drive financial inclusion.