Summary
- Mercy Corps partnered with local digital payment platform HesabPay to pilot a stablecoin-based humanitarian aid payment system for 100 smallholder farmers in rural eastern Afghanistan. The program reached over 840 people across multiple households, delivering $30,000 in HAFN (a local stablecoin pegged to the Afghan Afghani) for agricultural inputs to support livelihoods.
- The initiative achieved a 29% reduction in overall delivery costs and a 10-hour reduction in payment time compared to traditional informal money transfer agents, delivering more aid per dollar in a safer and faster way, directly to participants’ physical cards.
- Stablecoin rails provided 100% transaction traceability, eliminating intermediaries and reducing counterparty risks for humanitarian organizations operating in regions where reliance on informal money transfers is common and where formal banking infrastructure has collapsed.
- With 98% of participants preferring stablecoin payments over cash in future programming, the pilot demonstrates the viability of blockchain-based payment systems even in offline, low-connectivity environments.
- Read our joint report here.
Understanding the real-world impacts of emerging technology is critical to ensure their benefits are broadly shared and to shape responsible policy and industry practices. Mercy Corps Ventures’ Crypto for Good Fund and the Crypto Council for Innovation partnered to produce evidence-based reports on Web3 pilot projects in emerging economies. These reports showcase the pilots’ impact after deployment and seek to understand the economic, social, and environmental effects at the individual and community level.
Delivering Aid in Afghanistan’s Collapsed Financial System
For over two decades, Afghanistan has faced continuous sanctions and counter-terrorism financing regulations targeting the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Since the Taliban’s return to de facto authority in 2021, the formal Afghan banking system has stalled due to sanctions against leadership, with many international banks limiting transactions with Afghan banks to reduce risk and some governments freezing Afghan Central Bank assets. Ongoing banking negotiations with the De Facto Authority and neighboring countries further challenge the ability to move money into the country.
As a result, humanitarian actors authorized to operate in Afghanistan face severe barriers to delivering aid: collapsed banking rails, operational difficulties, and limited funding availability. By the end of 2024, the UN’s Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) was only 53% funded, leaving a $1.43 billion gap.
Humanitarian organizations have become heavily reliant on informal money transfer agents (IMTAs or Hawalas) to transfer funds into the country, which create security risks, compliance challenges, and transaction fees that have historically reached as high as 10% during intense periods. In remote areas, cash must be physically trucked through highly insecure areas, compounding the costs and risks of delivering aid to rural communities.
Mercy Corps Ventures launched the HesabPay pilot in Afghanistan to leverage a blockchain-based payment system to address these challenges in aid payments. Working with local partner Community Driven Development Organization (CDDO), the HesabPay platform distributed stablecoin payments directly to participating farmers via physical cards linked to digital wallets. This approach eliminated the need for intermediaries, reduced costs, and provided complete transaction transparency.
A critical innovation was the use of offline-capable physical cards that enabled farmers to receive HAFN payments and spend them at participating local agricultural vendors without internet connection. The app’s interface was designed to be accessible for users with zero digital literacy or smartphone access, with robust training and support provided throughout implementation. Vendors could then off-ramp or “cash out” their stablecoin balances at HesabPay’s regional branch offices to receive local currency.
According to the report, over three months in early 2025 this pilot engaged 100 farmers, providing financial support to an estimated 840 people across several rural localities in the Zurmat district of Paktia province. Surveys and interviews indicate that HesabPay delivered faster access to aid and improved participants’ sense of security and safety. The pilot achieved a 100% spend rate, with all funds used for intended agricultural purposes including food, medication, and farming inputs at participating vendors.
The use of blockchain rails enabled:
- Wallet-to-wallet transfers from Mercy Corps treasury directly to recipients via physical cards, eliminating the need for dangerous distribution points for cash that put recipients at risk in the conflict-impacted region;
- Provided consistent, predictable transaction costs independent of conflict conditions or liquidity crises, with a 29% reduction in overall costs and 65% reduction in distribution costs compared to traditional cash methods; and
- Enabled transaction traceability through on-chain records, streamlining compliance and reducing counterparty risks by eliminating intermediaries.
Call to Action
This pilot demonstrates how stablecoin infrastructure can overcome persistent constraints in humanitarian finance – particularly in conflict-affected and financially isolated regions with limited connectivity. In these contexts, new financial rails can not only step in immediately, but deliver aid that is transparent, cost-effective, and accessible to populations excluded from digital financial services.
Building on these results, Mercy Corps and HesabPay are expanding their work. HesabPay has completed a successful pilot in Northeastern Syria, and based on those results, the Mercy Corps Syria country office is exploring longer-term use of stablecoins in their programs. This expansion will enable the comparison of humanitarian aid delivery across a variety of challenging circumstances—from Afghanistan’s Taliban-controlled regions to Syria’s newly formed coalition government—and in different financial services environments.
As Syria’s sanctions landscape evolves and formal banking actors potentially re-enter the country, these parallel pilots will provide critical insights into how stablecoin solutions perform relative to traditional banking infrastructure when it becomes available again.
The partnership between Mercy Corps Ventures and CCI is committed to documenting these innovations and their effectiveness in creating operational improvements for humanitarian organizations while better serving vulnerable populations. As the landscape for digital financial infrastructure matures, collaboration with technology providers and humanitarian actors is critical to responsibly scale these outcomes worldwide.
More about the Mercy Corps and Crypto Council Partnership
Mercy Corps Ventures has invested $2+ million in seed funding to Web3 pilot projects that address critical humanitarian challenges. Its investments focus on projects utilizing Web3 technologies to enhance vital areas such as resource coordination, insurance, and financial services in regions facing humanitarian crises. The goal is to not only address immediate needs but also to foster sustainable development and improve the economic conditions of these communities. By integrating blockchain technology, these initiatives can achieve greater transparency, reduce corruption and inefficiency, and provide more direct support to those in need.
The Crypto Council for Innovation partnered with Mercy Corps Ventures to document a series of pilot projects, using its global research perspective to examine the real-world impacts and implications for scaling such solutions. These pilots focus on new technology such as Web3 tools that help deliver humanitarian assistance more effectively in challenging environments around the world.
