Dataswyft Wins Trade, Supply Chain Resilience & SME Finance Category at GLEIF vLEI Hackathon 2025
Award-winning solution demonstrates how verifiable digital identities can make “invisible” MSMEs investable
November 7, 2025 — Dataswyft has been named the winner of the Trade, Supply Chain Resilience & SME Finance category at the 2025 Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) vLEI Hackathon with its solution: “From Invisible to Investable: Financing MSMEs with the Dataswyft Wallet and vLEI.”
The first-of-its-kind solution showcased an open and interoperable global infrastructure that enables micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to own, store, and move verified data across digital wallets and systems. Anchored in Dataswyft’s Agriculture Smart Data Scheme, the framework ensures end-to-end integrity, governance and scalability across borders, marking a milestone in the evolution of verifiable digital identity and trusted data exchange.
The Hackathon brought together innovators worldwide to design digital trust solutions using verifiable Legal Entity Identifiers (vLEIs) -- a cryptographic, secure digital part of the conventional Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) system -- to enable verifiable organizational trust online. Dataswyft’s entry demonstrated how the Dataswyft Wallet, powered by vLEI-signed credentials, can transform informal business activity into smart data, owned and controlled by each business.
Already in commercial operation, the Dataswyft Wallet is opening a new frontier for vLEI-signed credentials, unlocking finance for millions of MSMEs by transforming everyday transactions and business activities into investable proofs.
Redefining Creditworthiness in the Age of Smart Data
Smallholder farmers in developing regions are among the most visible examples of informal MSMEs that struggle to access finance due to limited credit histories, lack of collateral and unverified business records.
Through a partnership with the Kuza OneNetwork, which connects more than 6,000 "agripreneurs" (agriculture-focused entrepreneurs) and 1.5 million farmers across nine countries in Africa and Asia, each verified agripreneur receives a Kuza vLEI-signed credential in their Dataswyft Wallet, establishing a globally recognized digital identity.
Unlike conventional wallets that simply store credentials, the Dataswyft Wallet enables users to apply them to digital badges that act as portable reliability evidence. This design allows lenders and service providers to offer financing and services directly to farmers based on experience and trusted interactions .
“The Dataswyft Wallet and vLEI solution turns what was once invisible into the investable,” said Davide Ceper, senior director of global strategy and growth at Dataswyft. “By transforming farmers’ everyday actions into smart data they control, it creates a new digital asset class that lets capital flow to where it is truly productive.”
Redefining Digital Trust and Inclusion On the Kuza OneNetwork
The solution’s first live demonstration -- the Stockist Pathway Graph Badge (SPG) -- brings this concept to life. The SPG contains two vLEI-signed credentials: one issued by Kuza, which captures an agripreneur’s verified profile and activity data, and another issued by Dataswyft, which represents wallet-to-wallet event data among agripreneurs, service providers, and finance partners engaged in stocking, storing, and transporting farm inputs.
Within this ecosystem, lenders using the Dataswyft Wallet can instantly validate SPG badges, receive vLEI-signed proofs, and issue digital credit vouchers. Service providers can verify the same badges and accept vouchers to facilitate logistics or warehouse transactions using the Wallet. Together, these interactions create a transparent, data-driven credit market where every transaction contributes to a shared layer of verifiable trust. Because participants own and store their data in their Dataswyft Wallets, they can freely move it across wallets or integrate it into their digital systems.
“The integration with Dataswyft's Wallet and vLEI framework shows what's possible when digital identity meets real-world behavior,” said Sriram Bharatam, founder and chief mentor of Kuza. "We're not just digitizing records but creating a living trust network that can transform how small businesses access opportunity across Africa and beyond."
The solution is being deployed in Kenya, where ecosystem partners will analyze the impact of capital flows on MSMEs within Dataswyft’s HATLAB Studio, an ecosystem catalyst for the new digital economy and a sandbox where ideas and infrastructures are co-created and tested before they scale.
To find out more, contact hatlab@dataswyft.com.
About Dataswyft
Dataswyft is a distributed network company that powers secure, compliant, and interoperable data exchange across individuals, businesses, and institutions. At its core is the Dataswyft Wallet that enables individuals and organizations to own, collect and share smart data securely and on their own terms through user-owned HAT Microservers. Embedded in apps and digital systems, the Wallet transforms everyday information into trusted, portable proof that fuels the digital economy. Spun out of U.K. academic research, Dataswyft powers digital public infrastructures for responsible, privacy-preserving data ecosystems. Learn more at www.dataswyft.com.
About Kuza One
Kuza is building on open agricultural digital public infrastructure designed to make value chains visible, trustworthy and valuable through smart data. Operating in nine countries, Kuza connects more than 6,000 youth agripreneurs and 1.5 million farmers with buyers, financial institutions and service providers in a trusted digital ecosystem aimed at driving sustainable and inclusive growth.
Watch how Dataswyft Wallet + GLEIF vLEI powers the Kuza OneNetwork to close the credit gap for agripreneurs and small farmholders in Africa and Asia.
Davide Ceper, Senior Director, Global Strategy & Growth, Dataswyft on why so many MSMEs are still invisible to finance and our proposed solution to close the gap.