What Does End of Phase-3 Mean?
As part of the evolution of Mojaloop, phase three was planned to happen at the same time as one or more implementations of Mojaloop were going live. The Mojaloop Community event, otherwise known as a Mojaloop Convening, held in September was referred to as the end of Phase3 event which marked the end Program Increment 7.
The previous phases each had a defined purpose. Phase-1 is referred to as “LevelOneProject – Reference Implementation” and Phase-2 as “Road to Production” or Productionization. Phase-3 was aptly named “Supporting Adoption & Deployment”. The high-level timelines for the phase are depicted in the evolution overview diagram below.
What was done and discussed at the End-of-Phase3 event
This event had participation from contributors, implementers, adopters, various interested parties, financial inclusion advocates, donors and stakeholders similar to the past few Mojaloop community events.
Contributors such as Coil, Crosslake, Deloitte, DFS Lab, Mifos, ModusBox, Kanzucode, and the Mojaloop OSS Core team demonstrated various new features and functionality and in some cases shared updates and roadmaps. Implementers such as BoT TIPS, Mifos, Mowali, Kanzucode gave an update on the status of their implementations, including several contributions made to the Mojaloop Open Source and demonstrations.
Topics of discussion included the establishment of the Mojaloop Foundation to manage the effort going forward, along with ‘Settlement’ and ‘Cross network/currency’, to name a few. Along with these, a roadmap for the phase 4-bridge (October-December 2019) was discussed with candidate topics and a few teams committing to deliverables.
Where does Phase-3 stand, timeline-wise?
What’s next for Mojaloop?
The next community event is planned for January 2020 in Johannesburg, SA. This will kick-off Mojaloop Phase-4.
In the Phase4-bridge phase which will be in progress till the end of this year, the focus for the Mojaloop OSS Core team and supporting contributors is on two items “Packaging” and “Performance Testing and Improvements”.
Look for an announcement in the coming months in the Mojaloop public space around a Virtual Inc. led entity, on behalf of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for Mojaloop. An entity for Mojaloop is in the works and more announcements on this will be made in the public space in the coming months.
Highlights from the end-of-phase3 Mojaloop event
- A demo by the Bank of TanzaniaTIPS (BoT) team – one of the two Mojaloop implementations
- And event framework demo by the ML OSS Core team demonstrated end to end tracking and other accomplishments in Mojaloop Open Source
- An update by the Mowali team including the Mowali CEO, CTO and representatives from MTN, Orange and ModusBox-Mowali team
- The ModusBox Product team demonstrated various products, some of which have been made open source.
- The Cash-Out use-case was demonstrated by Coil team (ISO 8583 adapter integration) using a real-life ATM machine.
- Mojaloop Community and Collaboration.
Mojaloop Community and Collaboration
The growth and collaboration of the Mojaloop community during phase-3 have been inspirational. Members have become involved in almost all areas, including:
- Design Authority (design, technical and architectural review board),
- Weekly all hands (i.e. scrum of scrums),
- Code contributions (e.g. Oracle, SDK, Simulators, bug fixes, new functionality)
- Learnings (documentation, knowledge exchange)
- Presenting at Mojacon (e.g. Bank of Tanzania, Mowali, Mojaloop Core team, Mifos, Kanzucode)
An impressive example of the collaboration was the community’s ability to source and stand up a live working ATM machine to test the ‘ATM initiated Cash-Out’ use-case. Attendees were able to initiate a Cash-Out from the ATM by selecting a ‘Mojaloop Transaction’ on the terminal screen, which resulted in a mobile device confirmation OTP before promptly dispensing the cash.
Event Framework in Mojaloop
One of the key features delivered in PI7 was Event Framework. This was done to support development teams and other implementers, but primarily Operations teams that support production systems to monitor events, generate alerts on a Mojaloop Switch running in Production that is making money transfers possible.
How can I get help?
As a contributor: A starting point to get acquainted with the Mojaloop world and contribute is mojaloop.io/documentation.
As someone interested in trying out Mojaloop: You may join and use the Mojaloop Slack to ask for help or pointers regarding your questions.
As a potential implementer / adopter: Please contact [email protected] where we can support you through our partner training program, enterprise support or implementation programs that will allow you to connect to or operate a Mojaloop based hub.
Apart from the above, please contact us if you have any specific needs or questions or are interested in contributing.
