Deadline: 19-Oct-20
The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) is requesting proposals for its programme entitled “Enabling interoperability for low-income people in Myanmar: Building a production-grade Mojaloop Integration Platform to facilitate a COVID-19 response” that is designed to support the digital transformation of Myanmar’s financial sector, with the microfinance sector in particular, through a common payment Level One aligned platform.
This project will support MFIs based in Myanmar to integrate with the country’s National Payment System. The scope of the project and its impact on beneficiaries is nation-wide.
UNCDF will provide a grant to the most suitable organization to support the implementation of a real-time payment platform for MFIs and other types of digital financial services providers (DFSPs) in order to enable payments.
Objectives
- Assessing the capacity of the MFIs to connect to a national payment platform,
- Building the technical capability to perform that task by connecting the participants to a Mojaloop platform,
- Testing a use case of interest for the industry by conducting some real-time payments.
Funding Information
- UNCDF’s contribution can be up to USD$1,420,000 based on the investment readiness level and outreach potential of the solution proposed.
Ineligible Costs
The following costs are ineligible and not accepted:
- Returns on capital and dividends paid by a beneficiary;
- Debt and debt service charges;
- Provisions for losses or debts;
- Interest owed;
- Costs declared by the applicant in the framework of another action receiving a grant financed from another donor;
- Indirect costs also called overheads.
Programme Phases
The project is expected to happen in 2 phases. The second phase dependent on the success of the previous:
- Phase 1: Rapid Deployment and Initial Operations (6 months)
- Deploy and configure a production-grade Mojaloop payment platform;
- Train and onboard 20 financial service providers;
- Develop a standard e-CTs product with the DSW and other related organizations;
- Support Myanmar Microfinance Association (MMFA) and the World Food Programme (WFP) with design work to convert existing databases into Mojaloop Oracles;
- Support the launch of relevant financial literacy content in coordination with UNCDF partners;
- Phase 2: Transition to Local Operations (12 months)
- Integrate with the DSW’s Social Management Information System;
- Iterate on business rules for use cases;
- Integrate the Mojaloop oracle into the MFI client database (MCIX) ;
- Migrate the Mojaloop deployment to a local cloud provide;r
- Scale electronic cash transfers and MFI use cases;
- Iterate on business rules for use cases;
- Transfer to local operations and ownership;
- Sustainability: Mojaloop platform is covering at least 50% of its costs by the end of the project from its participants.
Eligibility Criteria
- Entity registration:
- The applicant/lead applicant must be a registered entity developing payment integration platform/solutions or digital integration for financial service providers with experience in Mojaloop development.
- Country of operation:
- Applicants must be a registered entity, either incorporated in Myanmar or abroad.
- Consortiums (when applicable):
- Applicants may apply only once under this proposal, whether independently or in a consortium.
- Joint applications between market players in the target country or countries are encouraged if the solution proposed will expand delivery networks and promote rural and/or other last-mile access to beneficiaries.
- Applications from consortiums of organizations must show that the partnership was established prior to this call for applications.
- The lead applicant and partner must be registered entities with at least 3 years of operations and must have statutory accounts and audited financial statements for at least 3 operating years.
- Solutions to be supported:
- Applicants must demonstrate at least 2 years of proven experience developing production-grade Mojaloop platforms.
- Applicants must have an existing solution that has been tested in more than one developing country, with a preference in Myanmar or South East Asia.
- Project funding:
- Applicants must contribute at least 20 per cent, in-kind or cash, of the project’s costs (costs may include technical infrastructure, resources, and operations).
Selection Process
- Step 1: Eligibility screening – eligibility will be assessed according to the eligibility requirements.
- Step 2: Evaluation of eligible applications – applications will be evaluated based on the evaluation criteria.
- Step 3: Due diligence – due diligence on the applications and their applicants will be conducted on applications that receive the minimum qualifying score (70/100).
- Step 4: Notification of applications – all applicants will be notified of the status of their applications.
- Step 5: Pre-Grant negotiation and Performance-based Agreement – the selected applicants will finalise the scope of the grant and finalise budgets, indicators and targets, workplan and disbursements of the Grant that will be released on the achievement of each milestone.
- Step 6: Approval of the selected applications by the Investment Committee – applications selected by the Evaluation Committee will be reviewed, discussed and approved by the Investment Committee. Any further due diligence requirements, risk analysis or milestone recommendations from the Investment Committee will be followed in later steps.
- Step 7: Notification of applications – all applicants will be notified of the status of their applications after final approval from UNCDF.
For more information, visit https://bit.ly/2SOKf0F