Interledger Foundation announced its 2025 call for proposals, unlocking $5 million in new funding for fintech and web-based platforms building interoperable payment solutions.

The non-profit is on a mission to make financial services accessible to the millions still excluded from financial systems globally by driving the adoption of interoperable payment through grant-making in the areas of financial services, education and ambassadorship, and the development of its open-source payment standard, the Interledger Protocol (ILP). 

Acting as an “Internet of money,” the ILP is an open-source protocol that enables instant, interoperable transactions across different payment networks, whether traditional banks, mobile wallets or blockchain systems, without requiring a central authority.  

With this latest round, Interledger has now allocated over $21 million, more than a fifth of its $100 million endowment, toward initiatives reimagining financial infrastructure and enabling seamless money movement, such as payments infrastructure provider Chimoney, cross-border remittance network People’s Clearinghouse and banking software player, ThitsaWorks.  

Applications are open through April 4th, with a second window running from July 1 to August 1, 2025.

Furthering the Internet of Opportunity

The digitization of the global economy created a booming cross-border payments market, but barriers like high transaction fees, legacy banking infrastructure and closed networks still limit full economic participation. Since 2020, Interledger Foundation has tackled these challenges by funding projects that promote financial inclusion and interoperability.

Through its investments, the foundation supports fintech innovation across 40 countries. Prior grant recipients include:

• Mexico’s People’s Clearinghouse to create an interoperable remittance corridor between the US and 140 Mexican credit unions to reduce fees and wait times for cross-border payments, while increasing community banks’ available reserves to be reinvested locally.
• Florida’s Wallet Guru to develop a pay-as-you-go digital wallet and business platform for essential services like telecommunications and utilities, offering an alternative to prohibitive prepaid and postpaid models.  

“Money has found a way to work with the Internet, sometimes in damaging ways, but the Internet hasn’t found a way to work with money,” said Chris Lawrence, Chief Program Officer at Interledger Foundation. “Interledger Foundation is seeking to realize a vision for the Internet that goes beyond connectivity to be an Internet of opportunity: frictionless, accessible, and open.”

Who Can Apply?

Interledger Foundation is looking for fintech firms, financial services providers and web-based platforms, around the world, working on solutions that enable the movement of money:

• Across borders. In the absence of a standard payments infrastructure, private companies and financial institutions continue to control country-to-country transactions, making cross-border payments costly, slow and siloed. Interledger Foundation is looking to work with companies that are building solutions that either bypass or break down these barriers. 
• Domestically. System-to-system incompatibility stands in the way of cost and time efficient local consumer and business payments. The foundation is seeking organizations enhancing interoperability between payment networks to streamline domestic transactions.

As they build solutions that make access a reality for the 1.4 billion people still excluded from financial services globally, these projects will expand Interledger Foundation’s open payments ecosystem with new use cases that promote frictionless money movement. Selected organizations could receive up to $250,000 in funding to support their R&D efforts to integrate open payments infrastructure into their existing systems.