Existing Ecosystem Approaches to Inclusive and Accessible Digital Financial Services

In today’s landscape of increasingly riskier digital experiences and the recent Crowdstrike related IT global outage, universal access to digital financial services is seen as a critical infrastructural resource. Taking a decentralized approach that incorporates ethical design principles to safeguard the privacy, security, and autonomy of users is vital, that the Interledger Protocol seeks to facilitate globally. By prioritising transparency, accountability, and consent in eminent aspects of development of digital financial services (DFS), we ensure alignment with human rights principles and international standards, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Drawing from a range of real-world examples and grounded in experiential knowledge from open source evangelists, this panel will illustrate the diverse use cases of the development and dissemination of digital public goods that support financial inclusion that facilitate access to financial services for underserved communities, while carefully addressing potential harms and respecting human rights. Recognizing the global nature of the DFS, our approach takes into account regional differences and cultural contexts from regions with internet blackouts, shutdowns and censorship across Africa, Asia and Europe.

The Interledger Protocol seeks to facilitate open, standard, and interoperable payment systems across the globe. The session discusses the very crux of this mission – the development and deployment usable, accessible and secure technical standards and protocols that pave way for decentralised digital infrastructure – by offering a nuanced view of adoption that can help shape the community’s strategy and ensure efforts align with the broader mission of inclusivity, community, and Open Tech.

This panel will also address the need for increased investment in resilient and trustworthy digital infrastructure that support the delivery of financial services, especially in rural and remote areas, among traditionally-excluded communities, and among low-income and/or disability communities, elderly people. The absence of of performing regular security, accessibility audits and privacy enhancing technologies as distinct categories in many grant program descriptions, despite the crucial role they play in the ecosystems, is a key to a long term sustainable ecosystem — especially when these systems are managing digital money and assets.

The adoption of secure decentralized solutions becomes not just advantageous, but essential for robust, reliable, and resilient operations in our interconnected ILP ecosystem.