Stellar has announced a new initiative called the Stellar Partnership Grant Program. The program aims to “promote the development of high-impact projects in the Stellar ecosystem,” Stellar explained in a statement.

Jed McCaleb, Stellar co-founder and CTO, told Bitcoin Magazine, “Our overarching mission is to use the Stellar network to increase financial access globally and in particular to the more than 2.5 billion unbanked people in emerging markets across the world. The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) works mainly with licensed and regulated partners, such as banks, fintech startups and remittance companies. However, the Stellar protocol is a foundational and open technology usable by anyone.”

As for the partnership program, itself, Stellar will be accepting proposals from “leading organizations that are interested in building upon Stellar’s technology to improve the financial landscape and promote financial inclusion,” Stellar stated. Stellar will then grant select partners up to $2,000,000 USD per grant. This sum will be paid in Stellar Lumens coin, XLM, “ensuring the recipients are co-beneficiaries of network growth.”

As for who the program’s target will be, McCaleb said, “We are currently working with corporate entities like Deloitte and ICICI Bank, but with our partnership grant program, we’re really excited about tech-forward money transfer operators, and more generally, tech-forward non-bank financial institutions.”

“We’re looking to bring on quality long-term global partners that provide low-cost financial services, such as banking, micro-payments, and cross border payments and remittances to underserved markets that have large remittance flows,” McCaleb said. “These partners will be oriented around using the Stellar network as an integral part of their payment structure.”

Stellar has a history of encouraging development on its platform. The Stellar Build Challenge has been actively seeking out and funding new developments using their technology including wallets, ICOs, remittance applications, and much more. So far it has held four Build Challenges and awarded prizes to dozens of projects. Submissions for the final Build Challenge of 2017 are due on November 15.