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While development budgets are tightening, donors, NGOs and implementation partners are all struggling with an increasingly urgent question: how to move money effectively and safely to people who need it most – especially in complex or difficult to reach environments, where traditional bank fails?
A technology that is gaining ground in this space is the blockchain. “Speed, efficiency, transparency and the ability to pay people very directly … (Blockchain) is this very powerful technology in a crisis area,” said Candace Kelly, legal and political director of the Stellar Development Foundation, whose mission is to create fair access to the global financial system. Kelly joined the editor -in -chief of Devex, Kate Warren, for a podcast recording in Casa Devex, the Devex event center during the fourth international conference on development funding in Seville, Spain.
The results are convincing. In Ukraine, the United Nations refugee agency used the SDF platform to pay more than $ 5 million to 2,500 families via blockchain-based digital wallets, while GIZ uses technology to guarantee that front-line workers in conflict areas are paid in time. Transaction costs have dropped to 10,000 transfers, while efficiency gains also result from the abolition of “many frankly useless intermediaries who slow down and increase costs,” said Kelly.
The technology transparency features also respond to donor concerns as to whether the contributions really reach the targeted beneficiaries. “If you make a donation and everything is done on the blockchain, it’s transparent and immutable. You cannot alter a big blockchain book, and you can see where this money did,” said Kelly.
This special episode of this week in Global Development is sponsored by Stellar Development Foundation.
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