Re: Gates Foundation announces LevelOne Project

> On Apr 30, 2015, at 8:32 PM, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:
> 
> The Gates Foundation has just announced their LevelOne project, which is
> an attempt to extend financial services to the world's unbanked and
> underbanked:
> 
> https://leveloneproject.org/
> 
> If you only have 5 minutes, here's a video summarizing the project:
> 
> https://leveloneproject.org/videos/overview/

Hi Manu,

Catching up on this; thanks for the pointers. The video was indeed helpful.

> 
> A few weeks ago, I was invited out to the Gates Foundation to
> participate in the work that led to this announcement. There is a very
> large amount of overlap with the work we're doing here and the work that
> the Gates Foundation needs to have happen to achieve the mission they've
> outlined for the LevelOne project.
> 
> There are use cases that we should integrate into our use cases document:
> 
> https://leveloneproject.org/the-guide/user-requirements-behind-the-level-one-project-guide/

This is also useful and I think aligns with the architectural capabilities we are discussing
as well as the audience-specific benefits.

> 
> There is also a great deal of "lessons learned" that should deeply
> impact our thinking wrt. the design of the Payment Architecture:
> 
> https://leveloneproject.org/the-guide/payment-systems-lessons-learned-and-highlights/
> 
> Finally, they've released a Digital Financial Services guide that
> outlines the key components that they believe will lead to successful
> deployments of digital payment systems.
> 
> https://leveloneproject.org/the-guide/guide-for-digital-payments-system/

In that document in particular I find the section on “conditions necessary for success” section
very relevant to our upcoming FTF discussion about deployment.

Also, the design principles align to a certain degree with our own architectural vision,
except that their list is more specific because they are designing a new system, while we are
supporting existing systems as well.

Here’s a quick comparison:

* Open Loop: Web is open loop. We expect Web to act as a bridge between both open and closed loops.
* Immediate funds transfer. I think our expectation is to impose no time delays by virtue of our architecture. Any
  delays will be inherent to the underlying systems.
 * Push payments: We are enabling both push and pull payments within the system.
 * Same-day Settlement: Our expectations is to impose no time delays by virtue of our architecture
 * Open international standards: Yes!
 * Irrevocability: That seems to be a property that we would not enforce directly through our architecture but
   would depend on an underlying system.
 * Shared fraud service: Same
 * Tiered KYC: Same

Ian

> 
> This work, and the US Fed Faster Payments work, are two very important
> guides that should impact the technical direction of the work at W3C.
> 
> I learned a great deal more during my time at the Gates Foundation and
> hope to share with the group during our call next week now that the
> embargo has been lifted.
> 
> -- manu
> 
> --
> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: The Marathonic Dawn of Web Payments
> http://manu.sporny.org/2014/dawn-of-web-payments/
> 

--
Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>      http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                       +1 718 260 9447