Put open source to work
July 16–17, 2018: Training & Tutorials
July 18–19, 2018: Conference
Portland, OR

Open banking: Fueling innovation on an open source core banking platform

Edward Cable (Mifos Initiative), James Dailey (Mifos Initiative)
11:50am12:30pm Thursday, July 19, 2018
Level: Non-technical
Average rating: ****.
(4.33, 3 ratings)

Who is this presentation for?

  • Product managers, account executives, and those working in startups trying to enter the banking or fintech space

Prerequisite knowledge

  • Familiarity and awareness of the fintech and financial inclusion sectors (useful but not required)

What you'll learn

  • Explore the challenges and lessons learned in pitching open source to enterprise financial institutions and educating them to adopt
  • Discover how financial institutions ranging from established banks to fintech startups can get to market faster with new innovation through an open source banking infrastructure
  • Learn how to transform enterprise customers from mere consumers to actual contributors
  • Explore next-generation open source architecture and see how it can help you be a leader in open banking and the API economy
  • Learn how to join the industry-wide movement to provide the open source building blocks for banking infrastructure and establish Apache Fineract as the open standard for financial services innovation

Description

While the banking industry is finally just waking up to open source software, for the past 16 years, the Mifos project has staked out a position of 100% open source for a full banking application. Committed to developing a platform that supports the unbanked around the world, the Mifos Initiative contributed its Mifos X platform to the Apache Software Foundation as Apache Fineract in 2016. Although the company started in the underserved market of microfinance banks and microcredit programs, it has seen a recent uptake by major payment companies and larger banks.

Ed Cable and James Dailey share case studies on banks and fintech startups from four different continents that built on top of the Apache Fineract core banking platform, accelerating their innovation, lowering their costs, and transforming them from consumers to contributors of open source. For each case study, Ed and James highlight the sales cycle in getting senior management at enterprise financial institutions to explore and embrace open source, the impact to the bottom line and culture of the organization, and the challenge in convincing leadership to become members of the open source community. Along the way, they detail lessons learned in pitching open source to banking and payment corporations, the widespread effects of adopting it, and transforming banks from consumers to contributors.

Case studies include:

  • A Mexican bank that has built its innovation lab on top of Apache Fineract, allowing the bank to bypass an expensive procurement process with existing vendors who would charge for every change
  • A major Indian payments platform, whose agent network, core account management, and liquidity management is managed by Mifos, allowing it to scale to millions
  • A Palo Alto startup focused on financial inclusion in Nigeria, whose machine learning-based credit scoring engine has been integrated with Fineract
  • A bank in Germany that has embraced open source as a way to offer new innovative services
Photo of Edward Cable

Edward Cable

Mifos Initiative

Ed Cable is the president and CEO of the Mifos Initiative, a nonprofit initiative and global open source community building fintech solutions for the unbanked. A passionate change maker helping fuel poverty alleviation through financial inclusion, open source technology, and the power of community, Ed is a pioneer in catalyzing community growth and financial inclusion innovation.

Photo of James Dailey

James Dailey

Mifos Initiative

James Dailey is a social entrepreneur with expertise in startups, payment systems, climate change advocacy, open source models, logistics, and energy innovations. He consults on payment systems with the Gates Foundation as a member of the Modulor LLC team. James envisions a world where poverty solutions and climate solutions intertwine. He cofounded and built to scale MicroEnergyCredits.com, a social enterprise platform for carbon credits from microfinance clients in emerging markets, and is a founder and board member of open source banking platform the Mifos Initiative.