Get involved

Welcome to the Open Payments community! Whether you’re a developer, designer, or payments enthusiast, there are many ways to contribute to the Open Payments project. This guide will help you find your place in our growing ecosystem and make meaningful contributions to the future of open payments.

🚀 Get started

New to Open Payments?

• Explore the project: Browse the Open Payments repository to understand the codebase structure and recent activity
• Join our community:
  • Connect with us on Interledger Slack in the #open-payments channel for real-time discussions
  • Join the Open Payments community call for deeper technical conversations
• Get hands-on: Try implementing the Open Payments specification in your own projects to familiarize yourself with the APIs and payment flows

Make your first contribution

Ready to dive in? Here’s how to review good first issues on GitHub if you are new to open source development:

1. Go to good first issues in the Open Payments repo

2. Make sure to review our comprehensive contribution guide

Before claiming an issue, ensure you have:

• Read the issue description and comments
• Reviewed any linked documentation or related issues
• Understood the expected deliverables
• Confirmed the issue hasn’t been resolved in a recent pull request

💻 Coding

Contribute to the codebase: Help improve and expand the Open Payments ecosystem by contributing to:

• Open Payments repository Core specification
• OpenAPI package API definitions and schemas
• HTTP Signature Util Security utilities

Create GitHub issues for:

• Suggesting specification changes and improvements
• Reporting bugs and security vulnerabilities
• Requesting new features and enhancements
• Proposing new supported payment methods (currently only Interledger is supported)

Help expand payment method support: Open Payments currently supports Interledger as a payment method. We’re actively seeking contributions to add support for additional payment rails and methods.

📚 Documentation & learning

Improve existing documentation:

• Enhance clarity and accuracy of existing guides
• Create step-by-step tutorials for common integration patterns
• Develop troubleshooting guides and FAQ sections
• Write comprehensive API reference examples

Create educational content:

• Write blog posts about your Open Payments integration experiences
• Create video tutorials or demos showcasing payment flows
• Develop sample applications and code examples
• Share best practices and implementation patterns you’ve discovered
• Translate documentation to the following languages:
  • Arabic
  • Chinese
  • French
  • German
  • Japanese
  • Portuguese
  • Spanish

🤝 Community building

Join us at events:

• Attend the Interledger Summit and participate in our annual hackathon
• Join our Open Payments Community calls for regular discussions

Organize and participate:

• Host local meetups, coding sprints, and workshops (both online and offline)
• Organize hackathons and demo sessions
• Mentor new contributors and help them get started
• Collaborate with others on experimental features

Hackathon project ideas to inspire you:

• Create an e-commerce application with a “Pay with Open Payments” flow
• Build a subscription service using Open Payments APIs
• Develop a pay-as-you-go application that leverages Open Payments grant APIs for gradual payments up to user-defined limits
• Create proof-of-concept projects that showcase Open Payments capabilities in novel ways

🆘 Getting help

Stuck on something? We’re here to help:

• Ask questions in the #open-payments Slack channel for quick assistance
• Start a discussion on GitHub for broader topics and technical deep-dives
• Join our community calls for real-time collaboration

Remember, every contribution matters - whether it’s a small documentation fix, a bug report, or a major feature implementation. We’re excited to have you as part of the Open Payments community and look forward to building the future of open payments together!