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From Afghanistan to Haiti and Sudan, humanitarian groups are exploring how to use stablecoins – cryptocurrencies pegged to assets like the US dollar – to bypass insecurity and financial roadblocks that slow down assistance.
Aid groups are sending funds to conflict-hit areas where traditional banking infrastructure is limited and where international money transfers are subject to sanctions or long, regulatory delays. Mercy Corps, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the World Food Programme, and the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) are among those who have launched pilots or are actively sending assistance using stablecoins.
This year, the Fonkoze Foundation, a Haitian microfinance NGO, partnered with organisations including Mercy Corps Ventures – the US-based NGO’s impact investing arm – and Paon Bleu, a Haitian fintech company, to pilot sending stablecoins to 200 rural Haitian women. The goal is to test whether stablecoins can make assistance safer, more accessible, and more transparent.
The pilot uses Paon Bleu’s Bousol, a blockchain-based digital wallet that stores funds as USDC – a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the US dollar.
In Haiti, rampant gang violence can make carrying cash a safety hazard that turns aid recipients into extortion targets.
“I could be in that line as a gang member with my phone and just record the faces of everyone,” said Jude Jean-Baptiste, founder and CEO of Paon Bleu, which focuses on financial services for underserved communities.
Many Haitians also live several hours away from the nearest bank – an estimated 80% of Haitians are unbanked.
Globally, vague anti-money laundering laws with severe penalties often scare banks away from sending funds to crisis contexts, where fears of aid diversion to sanctioned groups – from Haitian gangs to the Taliban in Afghanistan – run high. As a result, banks will often subject transfers to these regions to lengthy compliance delays or deny them entirely – a dynamic known as “de-risking” that worsens financial access and undermines humanitarian assistance.
It adds up to what some aid organisations see as a “cash delivery crisis”, which some hope stablecoins can help to address. If successful, Mercy Corps says the pilot could be a model for how aid organisations could use stablecoins to deliver some $56 million sent annually in cash aid in Haiti.
Proponents say stablecoins are more of a last resort than a sector-wide silver bullet. But use of the cryptocurrency to send humanitarian assistance could thrive under the right conditions, and where conflict and bank de-risking have made traditional finance slow, expensive, unsafe, or unavailable.
Local know-how comes first
Where humanitarians have successfully used or piloted stablecoin transfers, local initiatives have first done the groundwork.
Much of the existing digital infrastructure is spearheaded by local organisations in contexts where conflict or sanctions have devastated banking and worsened exclusion – driving the need to find new ways of providing access to financial services.
In Haiti, a Bousol wallet can be set up with just a smartphone – a relatively seamless process compared to the hurdles that bar many from opening traditional bank accounts.
“A sizeable population lacks the documentation – government ID, proof of address, credit history – that traditional finance demands at sign-up,” said Jean-Baptiste.
After launching two years ago, there are now 4,390 users enrolled with Bousol. Paon Bleu is expanding its network of agents that can load accounts or cash out USDC into Haitian gourdes, as well as vendors who accept USDC as payment.
In Afghanistan, UNHCR has worked with HesabPay – an Afghan fintech company that operates a digital wallet that can store and transfer stablecoins – since February 2025.
Nearly 85% of adults in Afghanistan are unbanked, according to the World Bank. Through HesabPay, UNHCR has issued more than $35 million in stablecoins on pre-paid cards to some 150,000 Afghan families forced to return from Pakistan and Iran, according to Carlotta Wolf, a spokesperson for UNHCR.
The pre-paid cards have been used for an initial one-time support and follow-up payments, reaching more than 625,000 people – a project that would have been more difficult using cash or traditional banking rails. After the US abruptly left Afghanistan when the Taliban returned to power in 2021, the US blocked access to billions in reserves in Afghanistan’s central bank. Businesses could not process payrolls, and families lost access to their funds – contributing to the public distrust of banks, said Sanzar Kakar, HesabPay’s founder and chairman.
“It was a really big hit to the confidence of putting money in accounts as opposed to cash,” he said.
Today, HesabPay has more than one million users – ranging from rural families to young salaried workers in urban areas – who transfer some $183 million per month, Kakar said.
Following 2023 earthquakes in western Afghanistan’s Herat province, destroyed roads left many rural communities physically isolated. “To get funds to them through the traditional system would have been almost impossible,” Kakar said.
The World Food Programme used HesabPay to disburse funds directly to impacted families in seconds, Kakar said.
A last resort
In Sudan, the Norwegian Refugee Council has partnered with Coala Pay, a payment platform targeting the aid industry, to send funds to their local partners.
“You just cannot get money in locations where we need them” using regular banking channels, said Nathan Stevens, who was NRC’s global lead for cash and market systems until August.
He describes a slew of problems that make it difficult to send funds into Sudan through the banking system: unreliable corresponding banks, liquidity, and a revolving door of financial institutions that process payments.
“We are using stablecoins as a means of last resort,” he said.
Payments are relatively small so far – Stevens’ team sent $5,000 in stablecoins to individual local partners throughout Sudan in 2025.
“We’ve saved a lot of money by doing this, and we’ve been able to use that money more efficiently in ways that would have been eaten up previously with operational overhead.”
But using stablecoins has allowed NRC to send funds in minutes, rather than the weeks it might take to process payments through the banking system. Transfer fees are higher, but exchange rates are far better, Stevens said.
“We’ve saved a lot of money by doing this, and we’ve been able to use that money more efficiently in ways that would have been eaten up previously with operational overhead,” said Stevens.
He predicts that more aid groups working in adverse banking systems, like in Sudan, will turn to stablecoins: “It feels inevitable given the advantages that it has.”
Where stablecoins might work, and where they won’t
But using stablecoin and cryptocurrencies is not the solution for every context – nor does it need to be.
“In places where you’ve got decent banking and mobile money infrastructure… there’s probably only marginal benefit from using a blockchain-based solution,” said Nigel Pont, senior adviser for humanitarian affairs at the Algorand Foundation, a Delaware-based NGO that supports a blockchain operated by Algorand Inc., and is used by humanitarians like the UNHCR.
Instead, the technology is most useful in last resort circumstances. And as in Afghanistan or Haiti, there should already be domestic uptake in stablecoins, driven by local initiatives to address gaps left by traditional finance.
Sandra Uwantege Hart, an independent humanitarian consultant who has advised aid groups on stablecoin projects in 10 countries, looks for pre-existing cryptocurrency infrastructure – the prevalence of digital wallets, smartphones, and agents that convert cryptocurrencies into local currencies – when determining what contexts would best be suited for these trials.
“The first bit of contextual research is: Are stablecoins already being used?” she said.
Converting stablecoins into currency that can be spent in the local economy is a key obstacle. Often, you need internet connectivity for digital payments to work: that’s why Mercy Corps’ Haiti partnership also includes a plan to bring satellite WiFi to two municipalities. Some digital wallets, like HesabPay, can be managed without internet connection via feature phones.
The legacy of cryptocurrencies – plagued by headlines of lost fortunes and volatile worth – also feeds donor and humanitarian scepticism about stablecoins. “We’re still in an education phase,” said Jean-Baptiste.
Traceable, but what are the data risks?
Recent moves in Europe and the United States to regulate stablecoin could help make it more viable, some industry players believe.
The Trump-backed GENIUS Act in the US will fold stablecoins into formal financial regulations starting in early 2027. The rules are being finalised, but Ivo Jeník, a senior financial sector specialist with the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, a World Bank-linked think tank, believes it could be an opportunity to create clear humanitarian safeguards that encourage financial institutions to transfer money to crisis contexts, without fear of penalty.
Europe has included stablecoins under EU-wide regulation since 2024, and some have floated plans to promote a euro-denominated stablecoin – partly as a response to the explicit US move to promote digital dollarisation through USDC.
One reason stablecoin providers are more willing to send funds to conflict zones than traditional banks is because they say blockchains allow easier compliance with financial regulations. Banks sometimes require several corresponding banks in order to send funds across borders – a process which is often seen as a risk that could lead funds to illicit activity. But blockchains reduce the number of players.
“This technology does remove most – not all – of those intermediaries and makes every transaction traceable,” said Hart.
The Algorand blockchain tracks payments between wallets on a public database known as the Aid Trust Portal, which maps transaction details while withholding personal information. Security and compliance software, such as Elliptic, flags wallets that don’t comply with financial laws or are connected with illicit activity, said Pont.
Kakar said the blockchain allows HesabPay to “make sure every dollar is going to where it’s supposed to be”, easily monitor their clients, and ensure payments avoid sanctioned individuals: “We’re even stricter than banks, but we just do it much easier on the back end,” he said.
But the same benefits touted by proponents of blockchain tech can also create new risks, advocates for digital privacy caution. Even anonymised data can be used to re-identify people, and the integration of biometrics can lead to new and lasting risks. Should criminals identify owners of digital wallets, they could plan robberies using transaction history and token balance data displayed on the blockchain.
And because transactions on blockchains are permanent, some experts argue that this feature may infringe on EU data protection laws guaranteeing that data be erased upon request.
While more international aid groups weigh the potential of stablecoins, locally based organisations are pushing ahead beyond humanitarian operations.
Paon Bleu’s long-term goal is to move Haiti away from a cash-dependent economy to a digital one where users can save securely, build a transaction history, take out loans, receive remittances from abroad, and transfer funds easily.
“It gives them a path to growth. It gives them a path to dream. It gives them a path to think bigger,” said Jean-Baptiste.
Zach Theiler provides freelance editorial services for the Charity & Security Network, a Washington-based resource centre for non-profit organisations that has researched and advocated against de-risking. He is writing this in a personal capacity.
Edited by Irwin Loy.
