From accessing government services to receiving remittances or paying a local vendor, digital payments are essential for communities to have full economic participation. Yet billions of people remain excluded from today’s financial infrastructure.

At the 2025 United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Lillestrom, Norway, the Interledger Foundation joined governments, civil society organizations, academia, and the private sector to ask a pressing question: What would it take to make digital finance interoperable, inclusive, and rights-respecting by design?

Our answer took shape in a new Policy Blueprint for Interoperable Payment Protocols, launched by the IGF Dynamic Coalition on Digital Financial Inclusion. The Blueprint reimagines the infrastructure beneath digital payments as open, standards-based protocols that connect people across borders and currencies, without undermining national payment systems or monetary sovereignty. 

The Interledger Foundation served as the rapporteur for the Policy Blueprint, and we endorse its contents, however the text itself was developed independently by a group of subject matter experts under the guidelines that the United Nations sets for intersessional working groups that are tackling complex problems. In the UN system, when independent experts meet in such a manner, they do so in the form of a “Dynamic Coalition” which is a working group with a limited charter to provide input on a narrow question.

Why the Interledger Foundation Participated in the IGF

The United Nations Internet Governance Forum is one of the few truly global spaces where technical design, governance principles, and policy priorities are addressed in the one room. For the Interledger Foundation, as stewards of an open protocol for secure, currency-agnostic value transfer, the IGF offers a platform to advance a multistakeholder conversation about how the future of financial infrastructure should be built and who should be included in that process.

In an era when Internet governance increasingly encompasses the full digital ecosystem — including payments, data flows, AI, and connectivity — the case for inclusive, interoperable financial infrastructure is becoming clearer to see for more stakeholders.

We also invited two of our grantees to the IGF, ambassadors Smriti Parsheera and Dr. Stephanie Perrin, to share their research on digital financial inclusion with the global Internet governance community.

Five Policy Shifts for Inclusive Digital Payments

The Interledger Foundation took several evidence-informed messages to the IGF that came from the text of the Policy Blueprint for Interoperable Payment Protocols. 

We believe that in order to make open, interoperable digital payments a reality, policymakers, regulators, and system builders must embrace five core shifts:

1. Build Open Payment Roads, Not Private Tolls

Today’s digital payments landscape is fragmented. Providers often create closed, proprietary systems that don’t connect. But just as the Internet runs on open protocols, payments can too.

Why it matters: Open, interoperable payment protocols enable people to transact across systems and borders — securely and seamlessly — no matter the currency, geography, or provider. They are the public roads and bridges of the digital economy.

2. Design for Local Realities, Connect to Global Systems

One-size-fits-all standards often fail in diverse, low-resource contexts. True financial inclusion is local first.

Policy priority: Support modular, flexible standards that adapt to different devices, infrastructure, and regulatory frameworks. Ensure global compatibility while empowering communities to tailor solutions to their needs.

3. Share Governance and Include the People Who Are Usually Left Out

Financial infrastructure is too important to be governed by a handful of dominant players. Open protocols offer a path to more democratic oversight.

Action needed: Involve community banks, civil society leaders, and underrepresented communities in protocol development and governance. Build multistakeholder processes that are inclusive, transparent, and effective, without creating procedural gridlock.

4. Center Users in Every Design Decision

Too often, systems are built for financial institutions, not individuals. If end-users with low digital literacy or intermittent connectivity can’t navigate a system, it has failed.

Solution: Prioritize usability, functionality for in-person and offline payments, and trust. Build with input from traditionally-excluded communities and treat security and transparency as core features, not afterthoughts.

5. Public Investment is the Catalyst for Private Innovation

The market alone won’t close the inclusion gap. Nor can philanthropy support every worthy initiative. Public leadership is essential.

How to lead: Fund small providers, incentivize open infrastructure, and use policy tools like universal service obligations when appropriate. Inclusion is not charity: it’s infrastructure.

Looking Ahead

Because the Policy Blueprint for Interoperable Payment Protocols was developed by an independent working group, it is not specific to the Interledger Protocol. 

We acknowledge that in some ways our technology doesn’t yet fulfil all the ‘asks’ that subject matter experts say an ideal interoperable payment protocol would have. No protocol does, and for us that is the opportunity. We will work to improve our technology and community engagement to practice what we are now preaching.

Ultimately, the Interledger Foundation’s participation at IGF 2025 reflects our belief that financial systems, like the Internet itself, should be open, permissionless, and built for the public good. And our policy blueprint is not a prescription; it’s an invitation. One we are taking part in, and one that calls on lawmakers, technologists, and civil society advocates to co-create the next layer of global infrastructure: payment networks that are as inclusive, decentralized, and interoperable as the web.

As global attention turns in the coming months to the future of Internet governance (the WSIS renewal process, the fate of multistakeholderism, and the role of institutions like IGF whose mandate officially ends this year), we think it’s essential that digital financial inclusion remain part of the conversation. The infrastructure we build now will shape who gets to participate in the digital economy for decades to come.