Track 3: Owning the Rails | The Miseducation of Financial Technology

Admin
6 days ago
2 min read

A fintech education mixtape.

🎶 Track 3: Owning the Rails

In fintech, there’s a difference between riding the rails and owning the rails.

Most “financial inclusion” strategies still position Black and Brown communities as passengers — given the focus is on access to apps and platforms designed elsewhere, with rules they didn’t set.

True financial sovereignty requires something deeper: control of the rails themselves.

What Do We Mean by “Rails”?

Financial rails are the infrastructure that makes money move. In the legacy system, those rails were built by banks, card networks, and clearinghouses — each charging tolls, setting timelines, and dictating who gets on and who gets left behind.

In the digital era, rails are increasingly built on open protocols, APIs, and decentralized systems that can bypass old bottlenecks. This opens the door for entrepreneurs, engineers, and communities themselves to architect how money flows.

Why Ownership Matters

Without ownership, communities remain subject to predatory fees, biased underwriting, and exclusionary design.

With ownership, communities can design systems that reflect their values: trust, reciprocity, and regenerative growth.

The point isn’t just to access financial services more cheaply — it’s to redefine what financial systems are for. This ensures relevancy and flatter learning curves in the areas where community members and their families need it most.

Case Study: Interledger & Open Payments

The Interledger Protocol (ILP), powered by the Interledger Foundation, is one example of rails that anyone can use. Instead of money moving through a single bank or processor, ILP allows for interoperable, peer-to-peer transactions across borders, platforms, and currencies.

In partnership with Alabama A&M University and powered by seed capital and open source code from the Interledger Foundation, Blaze Group is offering an experiential learning opportunity that teaches students not only how to use fintech tools, but also how to prototype on top of rails like ILP and Rafiki.

This is what turns them from end-users into architects — from consumers into builders of tomorrow’s infrastructure.

From Gurus to Builders

In Track 2, we explored how Black and Brown communities are already fintech power users — the gurus of what works. Track 3 is about the next step: ensuring those same communities have the capital, training, and platforms to design and own the systems themselves.

Because history teaches us this: when underestimated communities build, the world has to catch up.

✨ Next Up in Track 4: We’ll look at what it takes to scale — moving from community pilots to sustainable systems that can reshape entire economies.