Bill Gates’ Foundation Is Teaming Up With Ripple And Coil In A New Financial Inclusion Initiative

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is in the blockchain news this week for a new initiative with one of the aspiring blockchain startups in the space. Launched by the Microsoft CEO and ran along with the help of his wife, this organization is teaming up with the California-based blockchain firm Coil in an attempt to enhance the financial access for the unbanked and underprivileged communities.

First announced by the principal technology chief and deputy director at the foundation, Miller Abel, the new partnership will make the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation a pioneer in blockchain technology. Meanwhile, Coil is a blockchain startup which was founded by the former CTO at Ripple, Stefan Thomas.

Proud to confirm that we are working on https://t.co/tbV0COdx3T with the @gatesfoundation – Technologies like @Interledger and #micropayments aren't just for media. They also increase #financialaccess and we want to do our part. https://t.co/LUjJo57OgY

— Coil (@Coil) October 18, 2018

The current plan is for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to implement Ripple’s Interledger Protocol and enable disbursement systems geared towards the poor and explored in the months to come.

Besides Ripple, there are other firms which were involved in developing the pro-poor payment system such as Crosslake Technologies, Software GRoup, ModusBox, and Dwolla. The partnership will adopt the open source payments software MojaLoop to enable the systems that are geared towards the poor. Speaking of, MojaLoop was financially backed by Bill Gates and developed months ago.

At the time, the MojaLoop open source software is praised by many experts as the perfect answer to increasing financial inclusion and solving the problem of interoperability which had been identified as a major obstacle when it comes to widening the access to basic financial services.