Kiva Protocol
Digital infrastructure for inclusive financial systems
The 1.7 billion adults worldwide who are financially excluded may have years of exceptional credit history outside traditional financial institutions. Because this history is disconnected from the bank down the street, large populations overpay for credit and are denied access to the formal financial sector, keeping them vulnerable to financial shocks.
Kiva seeks to break this cycle with a decentralized digital identity platform empowering borrowers to verify informal and formal past financial history. With just a thumbprint, users will be able to record their financial transactions, transfer that information between institutions, and gain access to formal bank accounts.
Kiva Protocol is a World Bank 2020 Mission Billion Challenge Global Prize winner.
Selected as the best solution to “ensure the inclusivity of ID systems for vulnerable groups” worldwide.
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Kiva Protocol is a secure, open source technology platform that enables identity verification and authentication for Know Your Customer-compliant account access and ongoing customer due diligence.
When deployed at national scale, and implemented in conjunction with modernized regulatory frameworks, Protocol is designed to enable a country to advance its financial inclusion goals and empower entire financial ecosystems – individuals, government agencies, informal market actors, and formal financial institutions.
Kiva launched the first country-level implementation of Kiva Protocol in Sierra Leone in 2019. Working with partners at the Bank of Sierra Leone, the National Civil Registration Authority, and UN Capital Development Fund, Kiva is now actively engaged with financial service providers across Sierra Leone to help integrate eKYC capability into existing bank onboarding and compliance systems.
The Kiva Protocol Dell Partnership
In 2020, Dell Technologies solidified its partnership with Kiva through alignment on technology innovation for social impact. Dell launched into supporting Kiva Protocol, an open-source digital identity authentication platform that helps the world’s most vulnerable populations to access the formal financial system. Dell is supporting population-scale implementations, building off Kiva Protocol’s launch in Sierra Leone, and with best-in-class digital security. Kiva Protocol has embraced Dell’s Secureworks® suite of cybersecurity services to ensure vulnerabilities are identified across the platform. Dell’s in-kind solutions provide cloud security architecture review, external threat hunting, incident response, and Kiva brand surveillance, helping to ensure Kiva Protocol provides highly secure, portable digital records for marginalized populations across the globe.
Over the next five years, Kiva Protocol will scale to new countries with the goal of reaching 250 million individuals worldwide.
Launching Kiva Protocol
