Press Release – San Francisco, CA: June 28, 2018: Clear Purchase, founded by payment infrastructure expert Nick Brown, answers several questions regarding their decision of June 7th to build their secure payment system for a cashless economy in developing countries without incorporating Mojaloop, developed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The main deciding factor revolved around Mojaloop being open source, with data security concerns that could lead to widespread payment fraud.
Why is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation making Mojaloop Open Source?
Mojaloop has the potential to make a big difference in the global Financial Inclusion initiative. As a foundation they have no need to make a profit, focussed instead on maximizing impact, so they are happy giving it away. They also have no interest in taking on the responsibility of supporting and maintaining the code for the long term. Open Source seems the obvious way for them to proceed.
Why have you focussed so much on fraud?
All other aspects of the payment industry are manageable, with occasional issues likely to be noticed immediately and often addressed quickly with minimal if any affect on users.
This is not the case with fraud. A new payment system will have minimal if any fraud while transaction volumes remain low, until one day it becomes the target of a major attack. The damage done to everyone involved will be massive, and the likelihood of a fix to prevent further fraud will be minimal. It will then be too late and the fraud will not stop!
This is why payment fraud must be taken seriously right from the beginning by every player involved.
Would your stance change if the Mojaloop business model were changed?
The quality of Mojaloop system design and the code itself is impressive. Unfortunately they have massively underestimated the potential for fraud, with the result that Mojaloop may cause more harm than good.
Not only would we reconsider our decision if their business model were modified, we would be happy to assist them if asked.
Nick Brown said, “If Mojaloop was not open source we would have incorporated it into our system, obviously replacing the Central Directory and modifying the code to fit our specific requirements. We would also considerably enhance data security in the initial system as well as on an ongoing basis, sharing what we did with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.”
The full assessment of Mojaloop written by Nick Brown can be found at: http://clearpurchase.com/docs/CP201806-Mojaloop-Assessment.pdf
Nick Brown is a technical expert with 30 years of experience in the payment infrastructure industry, which included the implementation of the VISA Debit Card system at VISA International. He has also been involved in writing national and international standards for data security for the financial services industry.
Clear Purchase, Inc. is part of the movement to break the poverty trap in developing countries by creating a truly cashless economy, our role being to build the payment network hub that connects everyone together to facilitate even the tiniest transactions.
For more information: www.clearpurchase.com
