CDFIs collectively account for $272 billion in cumulative financing deployed to underserved communities in the United States. Despite that scale, most still operate on settlement rails that take days to clear, while large commercial banks have participated in real-time payment networks for years. The consequence is concrete: loan disbursements arrive late when borrowers need funds most urgently, and repayment friction pushes small business owners toward costlier alternatives.

The cohort spans diverse aspects of the payments gap. Village Micro Fund is investigating whether cooperative finance models, including community savings pools managed through its EnDAO platform, can connect to ACH, Fedwire and FedNow without requiring participants to hold or use cryptocurrency. Kiva is conducting listening sessions with Native entrepreneurs and Tribal communities to understand barriers to affordable capital before making any technology recommendation, a sequencing that resists the industry habit of deploying infrastructure ahead of community readiness.

Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs (ACE) is working in Georgia to feed real-time cash flow data into its borrower portal, with a longer-term objective of replacing historical credit averages with real-time cash flow as an underwriting input. Washington Area Community Investment Fund (WACIF) is researching how irregular cash flow patterns affect loan repayment behaviour, seeking to identify where flexible payment timing could reduce defaults among otherwise viable businesses. AltCap is building a post-closing payment modernisation roadmap for small business owners in the Kansas City region, grounded in direct borrower feedback.

“Community-based lenders have long operated on payment infrastructure that was never designed with them in mind,” said Chris Lawrence , chief programme officer at Interledger Foundation.

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