This proposal seeks support from the Stellar Community Fund to integrate Payala’s offline payment technology into the Stellar ecosystem, extending Stellar’s reach to users who operate in limited or no-connectivity environments.

Payala enables secure, real-time digital transactions without requiring an internet connection, using Smart Cards and NFC-enabled smartphones. Its patented cryptographic protocol (US Patent: US10885519B1) ensures onward spending is possible while preventing double-spending, providing a secure bridge between on-chain and off-chain economies.

Built for resilience, Payala continues to function during power outages, natural disasters, or infrastructure disruptions, and in rural areas of developing countries where connectivity is unreliable. By leveraging the secure enclave of the Smart Card, Payala also works seamlessly with older smartphones that remain prevalent in many markets.

Unlike many mobile payment systems, Payala distributes the source of truth between the card and backend infrastructure, allowing users to transact and check balances even without personal devices—a critical advantage for unbanked and underserved populations.

Payala is fully developed and deployment-ready. It has undergone large-scale field testing with thousands of users in Timor-Leste, and has secured multiple commercial deployment contracts (currently under NDA).

Through this proposal, we aim to integrate Payala into the Stellar ecosystem in three key phases:

1. API Integration – Connect Payala’s off-chain transaction environment to the Stellar network, enabling interoperability and data exchange.

2. Wallet Integration – Merge Stellar’s SEP-10 wallet standard with Payala’s Smart Card system, embedding Stellar authentication directly into the Payala cardlet for seamless use within Stellar wallets.

3. Soroban Integration and Scaling – Enable bulk payments and Anchor outflow via Soroban smart contracts and transition the Payala–Stellar integration from proof-of-concept to a stable, scalable, and production-ready solution for global deployment.

By supporting this initiative, the Stellar community will help bring digital payments to the last mile, demonstrating how Stellar’s technology can enable financial inclusion even in fully offline environments—a critical step toward building a more resilient and universally accessible financial ecosystem.

$150.0K

Payala has been granted a US Patent (US10885519B1) for the core technology. It has also been proven in a pilot setup, partnering with World Vision International in a rural area of Timor-Leste with thousands of users, paying over 200k USD in total. A full attestation letter can be found here https://www.payala.com/_files/ugd/df711d_fb19f165d2564d9dab14a84b623b5712.pdf
Currently Payala's parent company Financial Empowerment Partners is developing multiple projects in countries ranging from the US, South Pacific, Central Africa to the Middle East and South Asia, all of which are under NDA but are all Government and NGO partnerships.
Two redacted Documents proving traction can be found here, others cannot be made public even in redacted form out of security concerns.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hvu2nh3wygffl20w0kr0t/Letter-of-Interest-FEP-01-July-2025_Redacted.pdf?rlkey=0m99f666f44zrputed2kssce8&dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8405ymjpmqbofk6eaphrk/VA-Impact-Path-and-Engagement-Narrative-Redacted.pdf?rlkey=3bbyqkraj1ismvb0rje5y3gau&dl=0

Tranche 1: API integration

Documentation: full API spec for client and admin endpoints.

Budget $50k

  + Engineering (backend + frontend): **$30,000

    **Scope: Impala bridge client and admin API.

Smartcards for test, hardware for NFC / SC dev **$4,000

  + DevOps & Infrastructure (testnet setup, CI/CD): **$6,000

    **Scope: robust test and CI/CD environment

  + Security & Testing (continuous security scanning/eval, integration tests, CI static and dependency analysis): **$10,000

    **Scope: incorporate secure development practices from the start for best results with maximal cost efficiency.

Success Criteria:

• Feature complete Impala bridge API for online Stellar and Payala payments.

Tranche 2: Applet and mobile

SEP-10 wallet for Stellar and Payala mobile integration

Open source identity cardlet for Stellar and Payala compatible authentication and on-line use.

NXP and Infineon cardlet compatibility testing

Budget $50k

��+ Engineering (mobile and smartcard): **$40,000

 + Security & Testing: **10,000

Including mobile device compatibility testing via device testing vendor

Success Criteria:

• Feature complete Impala demo application for Android with online Stellar and Payala payment support authenticated via Impala javacard applet.

Tranche 3: Soroban bulk payments and anchors, stable API release, scalability

Soroban inflow and outflow plus Anchors implementation with unit tests, test net validation.

Automated Terraform deployments for contracts, backend, and frontend infrastructure for client and admin endpoints.

Budget $50k

  + Engineering & QA (feature completion + load testing): $30,000

  + Security, red teaming, adversarial analysis: $13,000

  + DevOps & Infrastructure: $7,000

Success Criteria:

• Scalability and performance optimization across bridge API, JavaCard and Android applications.

• Soroban smart contacts deployed on mainnet for Anchor based inflow and outflow of Payala offline payment escrow accounts.

The development team currently consists of four seasoned industry professionals with decades of experience in software development, cryptography and cyber security. The entire company adds multiple seasoned experts with long careers in cyber security, disaster relief, financial markets and government.

Julian Finn - CTO: Linkedin Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/finnjulian/
Julian has two decades of experience in software development and team leadership in varied industries such as gaming, publishing and fintech. He holds a Master's equivalent Degree in Computer Science from Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences.

Martin Peck - Principal Engineer (No Social Media): Martin has over 30 years of experience as a software engineer and has deep expertise in cryptography as well as software architecture.

Ben Bender - Senior Software Engineer (No Social Media): Ben has been a full stack software engineer for over 20 years, specializing on security and data protection aspects of large scale web applications

Jag Chadha - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jag-chadha-01714626b/ - Jag has more than 20 years of experience in software engineering and specializes on mobile applications

Also part of the company but not involved in the stellar project:
Emerson Tan - Chief Innovation Officer - https://www.linkedin.com/in/emersontan/. With decades of experience in cyber security and disaster relief, Emerson as original Funder of Financial Empowerment Partners brings his unique expertise and understanding of our target geographies and crisis scenarios to the table.

John Fagan - CEO https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-fagan-04993998/ Among other roles, John has served as a senior official at the US Treasury, Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS and Financial Markets advisor.