What people ask us.

Maslow is a software and systems company building shared digital infrastructure for member-owned financial institutions—credit unions, cooperatives, and mutuals—worldwide. Rather than competing with these institutions, Maslow connects them, providing the shared technology, coordination standards, and governance that no single institution can build alone.

Maslow Holdings Pty Ltd is the current commercial builder and operator: it raises capital, employs and engages the team, develops and operates technology, enters contracts and carries execution risk. HAPPI is the intended enduring stewardship and people’s-commons architecture for the relevant shared connective infrastructure and post-cap ownership. The HAPPI Foundation does not yet legally exist. Maslow is constitution-governed and covenant-aligned; HAPPI is intended to be covenant-governed under its own final founding documents.

You can read more about HAPPI’s structure and theory of change at thehappi.org.

Maslow is built for two beneficiaries: the member-owned institutions that join, and the network they create together. Federated institutions retain their own licences, boards, and community relationships—Maslow provides the shared layer beneath them, not a replacement for them.

Maslow Holdings Pty Ltd is an Australian company, based in Melbourne. The work is global: the infrastructure is being designed with and for member-owned financial institutions worldwide—credit unions, cooperatives, mutuals, and community development financial institutions across many jurisdictions. The inaugural cohort is intended to be convened internationally, and the participation framework is being built to accommodate institutions operating under different regulatory regimes.

At least 178,555 member-owned financial institutions serve at least 508.7 million members and hold at least US$11.30 trillion in assets across 109 countries and jurisdictions. They already possess extraordinary distributed strength, but remain fragmented across jurisdictions, technology systems, vendors and institutional networks. They carry the same regulatory and cyber obligations as global commercial banks despite being a fraction of their size, while competitors deploy new technology at a pace no single mutual can match.

The missing piece isn’t a product or a marketing campaign—it’s a shared operating layer that no extractive vendor has a commercial reason to provide.

Member-owned institutions carry substantial regulatory, cybersecurity, technology and service obligations while operating through fragmented jurisdictional, vendor and institutional networks. Existing shared-service models have created valuable capabilities, but remain partial and generally bounded by jurisdiction, institution type, product or vendor. Maslow’s proposition is a neutral cross-jurisdictional connective layer that preserves each institution’s licence, local identity, member relationship and authority while enabling shared capability across the wider system.

Yes—and those attempts are instructive. CUSOs, league service bureaus, shared-service consortia, and peak-body platforms have all built pieces of this, and many do good work today. But they have stayed partial for structural reasons rather than lack of will: most are bound to a single jurisdiction or league, so the network effects stop at the border; most are funded year to year by their members, so they are perpetually under-capitalised against venture-funded vendors; and few have a neutral, capture-proof holder of the shared layer, so institutions hesitate to deepen their dependence on infrastructure a peer or a vendor could one day control.

Maslow’s design answers each of those directly: a commercial build entity that can raise capital and attract senior talent on market terms, and an intended stewardship architecture designed so that no one is positioned to capture what is built. Maslow is constitution-governed and covenant-aligned. HAPPI is intended to be covenant-governed. The HAPPI Covenant expresses the intended stewardship architecture and does not directly bind Maslow or override Maslow’s Constitution, contracts or applicable law. The HAPPI Foundation does not yet legally exist. Within 120 days after Offer Completion, Maslow intends to establish it or complete and lodge the required external applications and take all reasonably necessary steps to procure establishment. Maslow is intended ultimately to be absorbed into HAPPI’s architecture, but no automatic present dissolution or transfer of every Maslow asset or operation is represented.

Three curves are crossing. Consolidation pressure across the sector is real—so every year of delay shrinks the network that shared infrastructure could connect. The regulatory and cyber cost floor keeps rising, and it falls on member-owned institutions that are a fraction of the size of the commercial banks that carry the same obligations. And the cost of building software has fallen dramatically: modern engineering makes a shared, world-class layer feasible at a fraction of what it would have cost even five years ago, while widening the experience gap for any institution that has to face the technology shift alone.

The option to connect the sector is open now. Consolidation is how it closes.

Infrastructure, not products. The system has four layers: a shared interface institutions can deploy without dismantling what they have; interoperability standards so they can plug in without bespoke integration; shared financial utilities—pooled liquidity, shared risk frameworks, and capital products beyond any single institution’s reach; and a governance architecture that keeps power distributed and prevents capture by any one actor.

Maslow already operates a substantial proprietary technology and institutional operating stack. That existing capability supports company operations, investor administration, institutional intelligence, governance, research and communications. It is distinct from the proposed institution-facing Maslow/HAPPI MVP, which will be defined with the inaugural institutional cohort and built only after the required binding participation and funding agreements are secured.

No. The design principle is “light global, heavy local.” The shared interface layer is built to deploy on top of existing infrastructure rather than rip and replace it, and the interoperability standards mean each new institution lowers the cost of joining for the next—without rebuilding from scratch.

Each institution that joins adds value for every other one: shared standards lower integration costs, and the collective balance sheet grows—pooling liquidity and risk in ways no member could achieve alone. Crucially, institutions join without fear of lock-in, because the governance is embedded rather than bolted on. That is what makes participation the rational choice rather than a leap of faith.

The institution does—and that doesn’t change. Member relationships, and the data associated with them, remain with the institution. Maslow takes no ownership of member data; that is one of the explicit commitments of the participation framework, alongside taking no equity in participating institutions, taking no deposits, and making no lending decisions. The infrastructure is shared. The institution remains the institution.

Maslow’s Constitution establishes a capped-equity architecture. Shares issued under the 2026 Offer carry a stricter 150× contractual cap on the CPI-adjusted amount paid. When a Share Parcel reaches its applicable cap, it transfers for nominal consideration to the existing Customer Trust or another permitted Customers Vehicle. The intended end-state is for the HAPPI Foundation, once legally established and operationally capable, to own or control that post-cap equity directly or through a trust or vehicle it controls. Maslow is intended ultimately to be absorbed into HAPPI’s architecture, but no automatic present dissolution or transfer of every Maslow asset or operation is represented.

The fourth layer of the system is a federated coordination structure that keeps power distributed and accountability local. Member institutions retain their own licences, boards, and community relationships throughout. Maslow is constitution-governed and covenant-aligned. HAPPI is intended to be covenant-governed. The HAPPI Covenant expresses the intended stewardship architecture and does not directly bind Maslow or override Maslow’s Constitution, contracts or applicable law.

Maslow is testing a transparent, capacity-adjusted per-member fee with the inaugural cohort. The current model applies a common US$0.05 monthly floor and US$2.00 monthly cap. Final pricing remains subject to cohort validation and definitive agreements.

Where jurisdictional economics warrant it—institutions operating in lower-income markets, or where the headline fee would be disproportionate—participation may be supported through a structured concession underwritten by grant funding rather than cross-subsidised by other institutions.

It is a set of structural choices rather than a value statement. The fee is per-member—it grows in direct proportion to the institution’s membership rather than the volume of financial activity flowing through them, which removes the incentive to push members into higher-margin products. Investor returns are bounded by design: investors underwrite the build, not the perpetual operation. And Maslow takes nothing that belongs to the institution—no equity, no deposits, no lending decisions, no member data.

Under the intended end-state, once relevant shared infrastructure transitions to HAPPI stewardship, the fee is intended to become the operating budget of a perpetual commons, bounded by what the system costs to operate, maintain, and advance.

The strategic destination is for Maslow ultimately to be absorbed into HAPPI’s enduring architecture when the required legal, operational, regulatory and stewardship conditions permit. Post-cap equity is intended to move through the Customer Trust pathway toward HAPPI ownership or control. Relevant shared connective infrastructure may transition through deliberate transfer, licence and operating arrangements. No automatic present dissolution or transfer of every asset and operation is represented, and Maslow must retain the rights required to perform its commercial and operating role while that role remains useful.

Yes—through two doors. For investors, materials including the Investment Memorandum are available on request and under confidentiality; nothing on this website is an offer of securities or an invitation to invest. For philanthropic and grant funders, Maslow has a clear preference: if grant capital is available to underwrite the build in place of equity, we will take it, because it lets the infrastructure reach institutions on the most favourable terms possible. Either way, the place to start is the contact page, which has a dedicated route for investors and funders.

Mostly, no—and where the honest answer is “partly”, we say so. Maslow is capitalised by investors whose returns are capped by constitution, and by the institutions the infrastructure serves. We do not seek program funding—the grants that keep frontline work alive. The “partly”: where grant capital is available to underwrite the build in place of equity, we will take it, and HAPPI will seek grant funding for one narrow thing—extending the global infrastructure layer to institutions that cannot afford access alone. This paragraph exists so you can hold us to it.

Maslow has already built the operating foundations required to execute the next phase: four proprietary operating applications, a unified internal operating environment, investor and registry infrastructure, institutional intelligence, a production HAPPI Atlas foundation and controlled governance, security and evidence systems. The next step is commercial validation and co-definition of the institution-facing MVP with the inaugural cohort.

The institution-facing build is planned in five named phases over roughly eighteen months, from Minimum Target Completion to a functioning product (an MVP) in the hands of the inaugural cohort, with the full build committed only after at least 10 binding institutional agreements following the residency and 28-day decision period. The phases are phase-relative rather than date-anchored, and they overlap by design. You can see the full sequence on the Build page.

Following Minimum Target Completion, Maslow intends to assemble an inaugural formation group of approximately 20–30 suitable member-owned financial institutions across multiple jurisdictions. The current planning model tests a balanced 12+12 cohort. The institutions will convene for an intensive week-long residency to define the MVP and its commercial, technical and governance parameters, then complete a 28-day internal decision period. Maslow’s gate is at least 10 binding institutional agreements to fund and participate in the MVP build. Formal commercial engagement begins after funding; the proposition has nevertheless been shaped by years of fieldwork and extensive discussions with member-owned institutions.

Maslow was co-founded by Kane Jackson (Chief Executive Officer), Mina Calvert (Chief Technology Officer), and Caitlin Robinson (Chief Operating Officer). The wider team spans cooperative finance, systems design, technology, and capital markets, supported by a group of advisors from across the global cooperative and community-finance sector, and will be announced on the team page. If you are evaluating Maslow for your institution and want to know who you would be working with, get in touch and we will make the right introductions directly.

The company is named after Abraham Maslow—and that naming carries a history we are responsible for acknowledging. Much of what is associated with Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” has direct antecedents in Blackfoot teachings, in which self-actualisation is the foundation on which community and cultural perpetuity are built—not the apex. We sit with that tension openly rather than smoothing it over. The full statement, its sources, and our Acknowledgement of Country are on the Acknowledgement page.

There are three doors, one conversation. Whether you’re a credit union or member-owned institution, an investor or funder, or press, a researcher, or a movement ally, every enquiry reaches a person on the team within two business days—read carefully and answered personally. Start at the Get in touch page, or email contact us.