Students in Covenant University (Nigeria), USIU-Africa in Kenya and the University of Cape Town (South Africa) are working with U.S.-based Interledger Foundation to build open financial systems that solve today’s interoperability challenges of payment systems.

Tech students from Nigeria, Kenya and South African universities have been drawn into a select pool of programs that are geared at building the next generation of payments leaders, who understand where today’s financial systems fall short and how to build something better with open finance.

In an update on Monday, the Interledger Foundation (ILF), an organization building and advocating for an interoperable payments network, announced that it has engaged over 10 universities across North America, Europe, Australia and Africa to bring open payments curriculum into the classroom.

The new initiative introduces programs designed to build the next generation of payments professionals, helping solve some of the worlds biggest challenges in facilitating smooth trade. Across the markets, payments systems remain fragmented, posing as bottlenecks in a world that is increasingly interconnected.

According to the ILF, most merchants need to accept a mix of cash, credit cards, debit, buy now pay later options and other digital payment methods to ensure point of sale limitations aren’t a roadblock to customers. What’s more each of these methods requires different technical capabilities and standalone integrations.

Everything coexists separately, but nothing inherently works together and there are currently few incentives to opening up the silos that keep them apart, the ILF noted in a statement, adding that the result are a fragmented, costly and slow global payments ecosystem where money that could settle in seconds instead takes days.

The Interledger Foundation is says it seeks to address these payments challenge with a multi-country educational effort to promote interoperability by proliferating its Interledger Protocol (ILP). This open source network enables any currency to move freely across institutions and borders without the limitations characteristic of the current patchwork financial system.

When deployed at scale, ILP could serve as the foundation for digital public infrastructures (DPIs) similar to India’s UPI and Brazil’s Pix – but with cross-border capabilities.

Interledger Foundation payments curriculum

Payments issues are core to the new curriculum that the Interledger Foundation and universities are bringing to the next generation of entrepreneurs and technologists who will help shape the future of financial infrastructure and expand the talent pipeline. The goal is to make open payments the default rather than the exception through the following programs:

Alabama A&M University (Alabama, USA) is embedding open payments into credit-bearing business coursework through its Dollarcraft program, where students research financial inclusion challenges and build ILP-enabled digital banking prototypes alongside engineering students.
Atlanta University Center Consortium (Georgia, USA) — Comprised of Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, Morehouse School of Medicine, and Spelman College — is uniting 25 HBCU students to design and prototype open payment solutions that address systemic financial inequities.
Benedict College (South Carolina, USA) is launching a new ILP Pathways program in which students complete a 150-hour internship, then mentor local youth and help minority-owned businesses adopt open payment solutions.
Bowie State University (Maryland, USA) built a multi-campus open payments program that engaged more than 700 students across four continents through integrated coursework, micro-internships, and hackathon-style events, expanding to seven additional HBCUs nationwide.
Covenant University (Nigeria) is launching two new courses dedicated to open payments and ILP, giving students hands-on experience building interoperable fintech solutions through innovation labs, hackathons, and community digital inclusion clinics.
The Hague University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands) is launching an interdisciplinary course bridging finance, law, and technology, which is the first effort to build a European talent pipeline in open payments education.
USIU-Africa (Kenya) is integrating the Interledger Protocol into entrepreneurship training and startup incubation in Nairobi, equipping 40 students to build financial inclusion solutions for Kenya’s underbanked communities.
University of Cape Town (South Africa) embedded open payments into its Master’s in Financial Technology program, requiring students to build fully operational payment applications as capstone projects. It also launched a dedicated Financial Innovation Hub for fintech research across Africa.
Western Sydney University (Australia) is integrating an eight-week ILP curriculum module into its cybersecurity and business programs, challenging students to design and stress-test secure, interoperable fintech applications.

Payments systems that improve processes

“The next generation of leaders has the opportunity to build payment systems that improve the closed, siloed systems of the past,” said Briana Marbury, President and CEO at Interledger Foundation.

“Working with these universities, we have the opportunity to instill in students the knowledge and tools they need to design for interoperability from day one, so open payments become the standard, rather than the exception.”

These university partnerships are one part of a broader effort by the Interledger Foundation to build an open financial system where sending money is as simple as sending an email. ILF continues to expand its ecosystem through partnerships with organizations and individuals to simplify open payments infrastructure, including People’s Clearinghouse, Paysys Labs, and Kanzu Finance.

The Interledger Foundation has invested more than $21 million in over 200 projects across 42 countries, backing developers, entrepreneurs, artists, and innovators who are building solutions that remove barriers within outdated and restrictive financial systems.

For other schools interested in getting involved, the Interledger Foundation will open a new call for applications later in the year. If students on campus are interested in spearheading open payments initiatives.

The Interledger Foundation works to increase access to digital financial services for the 1.4 billion people worldwide who are currently excluded from traditional banking systems through the Interledger Protocol (ILP). It works with partners to integrate its ILP into existing and emerging financial and payments infrastructures.