How Interledger Works
A plain-language guide to what Interledger is, what it makes possible, and who it is for.
Financial Systems Were not Built to Talk to Each Other
What do a bank account, a mobile wallet, a credit union in rural Uganda, and a fintech platform in Mexico City have in common? They’re all running on separate infrastructure, with different rules, different formats, and no shared language.
Interledger is the connective layer that changes this. It does not ask institutions to replace the systems they already run. It gives those systems a common way to communicate and transact, the same way the internet gave computers a common language for sharing information.
Communication already works this way. You send a message and it arrives in seconds, without either side thinking about how it got there. Payments are also just data, and Interledger exists to bring them up to the same standard.
Reimagine Global Payments with the Creators of Interledger
Hear ILP creators and ILF board members discuss with Sabine, our CTO, the origins of ILP, its design principles, and their vision for a universal payment network.
What Interledger Makes Possible
When financial systems can connect through a shared, open standard, a few things become possible that closed and fragmented infrastructure cannot support:
- Money moves between different providers, countries, and currencies as easily as a message.
- Institutions can connect once and reach many, instead of building a separate integration for every partner.
- Smaller and community-based institutions take part in networks that were previously out of reach.
The technology behind this is a set of open standards, chiefly the Interledger Protocol and Open Payments, which are maintained by the Interledger Foundation.
Who it serves
Our focus is on regulated and mission-driven financial institutions, such as community banks, credit unions, fintechs supporting inclusion, and CDFIs, and on the people and communities they serve.
Our technology serves them by giving them a single, standards-based way into the wider network. Instead of building and maintaining a separate integration for every partner, an institution connects once through open standards like the Interledger Protocol and Open Payments, and can then transact with any other connected system, whatever currency, account type, or technology sits on the other end. For smaller and community-based institutions, that lowers the cost and technical barrier of reaching customers, partners, and networks that were previously out of reach.
Open Standards, Independently Governed
The Interledger Protocol and Open Payments standard are free to use, openly governed, and maintained by a foundation with no commercial stake in how or how much they are used. There are no licensing fees, no vendor lock-in, and no profit motive that could result in fee structures, access restrictions, or a pivot away from open infrastructure. The standards exist in the public interest, and the Interledger Foundation is structured to keep them there.
For financial institutions and developers building on Interledger technology, that independence is a practical guarantee as much as a principle. Open, nonprofit-governed infrastructure does not disappear because a company changes strategy or a platform decides to monetize its network. The code is auditable, the governance is transparent, and there is no commercial motive to close off what was built openly.