Introduction

At a high level, onboarding to a Mojaloop-based scheme requires a Digital Financial Service Provider (DFSP) to focus their efforts around the following major milestones:

  • Integration of their Core Backend with the Mojaloop Switch on the API level (this involves both coding and testing).

  • Connecting to Mojaloop pre-production and production environments following rigorous Mojaloop security requirements.

Payment Manager for Mojaloop provides functionality to simplify both of these steps. This document provides details about API-level integration.

The following diagram provides a high-level view of the integration between a Mojaloop Real-Time Payment System and a DFSP’s Core Backend.

payment manager architecture
Figure 1. Payment Manager – system architecture

Payment Manager provides the following components:

  • Core Connector: Integrates a DFSP’s Core Backend to Payment Manager as an "adapter" for both parts so communication is possible between them. It uses standard templates, the majority of them written in Apache Camel, a declarative language for integration engineers that does not require writing code from scratch. There is a ready-made Core Connector template available for DFSPs to simplify their development effort.

  • Mojaloop Connector: Comes with the following key components:

    • A Mojaloop-SDK, which provides:

      • Mojaloop-compliant security components

      • HTTP header processing capabilities

      • A simplified version of the Mojaloop FSPIOP API. Core Connector will be talking to this API.

    • A Connection Manager Client, which simplifies and automates certificate creation, signing and exchange, as well as the configuration of the connections required to different environments.

  • Portals: Provide dashboards for monitoring transactions and service status. They also allow DFSPs to manage their security keys, certificates and endpoint configuration required for connecting to a Mojaloop-based scheme in a guided way.

Core Connector

To communicate with Payment Manager, DFSPs are required to implement Core Connector in alignment with their backend technology so that it can call the Payment Manager API (a simplified use-case-oriented version of the Mojaloop FSPIOP API). To help implementation efforts, DFSPs are provided with:

  • the specification of the Payment Manager API

  • a Core Connector template

What is a Core Connector template? DFSP Core Backends have their own custom API or enterprise integration solutions so multiple variants of Core Connector have been built to align with common Core Banking Solution (CBS) products. These Core Connector variants are all built using a standard template. The template provides a placeholder codebase for the API endpoints that need to be developed.

This document aims to provide guidance regarding a template that has been developed for REST-based implementations.

The chosen deployment option will influence the required integration effort on the DFSP’s part. When deploying Payment Manager, two options are available:

  • Hosted by System Integrator: A third-party System Integrator deploys Payment Manager in the cloud, and syncs up the Core Connector template with the DFSP’s core backend implementation.

  • Self-hosted by DFSP: The DFSP deploys Payment Manager on premise or in the cloud, and the customisation of the Core Connector template can be done by a number of actors (depending on the outcome of an initial assessment of DFSP capabilities):

    • the System Integrator

    • the System Integrator and the vendor of the DFSP’s core backend solution (in close collaboration)

    • the DFSP and the vendor of the DFSP’s core backend solution (in close collaboration)