Scaling the project across the Pacific
A year after its groundbreaking pilot, Oxfam in Vanuatu, together with 17 local and international partners, is scaling its blockchain-based UnBlocked Cash project to distribute cash and voucher assistance to over 35,000 beneficiaries affected by the Category 5 Cyclone Harold and COVID-19.
UnBlocked Cash is now serving as a single payment platform to unite partners in the harmonized delivery of cash assistance, enhancing coordination, collective capacity, and ensuring more value for each donor dollar by boosting the local economy. Oxfam is deploying this solution in Papua New Guinea later this year and in the Solomon Islands in 2021, with the Pacific region leading other pilot locations across Oxfam’s global confederation.
Oxfam’s UnBlocked Cash project, powered by Australian fintech Sempo, is set to tackle the growing humanitarian demands by saving costs of distributing aid by up to 75%, reducing delivery times by over 90%, and bringing more transparency and accountability in the process.
All of this is possible thanks to a blend of humanitarian assistance, digital financial inclusion, and locally-led blockchain innovation. The UnBlocked Cash solution consists of the e-voucher “tap-and-pay” cards used by beneficiaries, a smartphone app through which vendors receive the payments, and an online platform where NGOs like Oxfam can monitor transactions remotely and in real-time.
The innovative use of digital currency, in this case, a digitized version of the local currency in the form of a collateralized blockchain token, has introduced the concept of digital financial inclusion and access to Vanuatu, where the majority of the population are unable to access ‘brick and mortar’ banking services. In other iterations of the initiative, the use of stable digital currencies (stablecoins) as a “borderless” digital store of value has also introduced the potential for the institutional donors to fund, and track funds across multi-country programs, with just a single contribution and access to a central analytics dashboard. The platform also has the potential to flexibly integrate direct cash distribution and individual donations, allowing for a more transparent, direct, and participatory model for humanitarian assistance globally.
Earlier this year, Oxfam won a €1M prize from the European Commission to support the development of this humanitarian innovation beyond the Pacific region.
Vanuatu Pilot 2019
“During the UnBlocked Cash pilot, Oxfam in partnership with Sempo and ConsenSys distributed 966,443 Vanuatu Vatu (VUV) or
11,896.91 Australian Dollars (AUD) to 187 heads of households and 29 vendors, which was estimated to have directly benefited some 1,209 individuals in two urban communities in one of the world’s most at-risk countries.
Over the course of a month, Oxfam and its partners were able to successfully deliver a first-of-its-kind Distributed Ledger
Technology (DLT) based solution employing the Dai (DAI) stablecoin. Additionally, the system piloted in Vanuatu saw the successful deployment of a novel near-field communication (NFC) card, which in tandem with a ‘side-channel’ developed by Sempo, allowed the system to cope with poor internet connectivity while ensuring double-spends were impossible despite offline transactions.
Oxfam set out to determine whether DLTs can reduce the cost and transaction time of cash and voucher assistance (CVA), while improving transparency, security, and overall user experience (UX) within the urban context of Port Vila, Republic of Vanuatu.
With the support of Sempo, the UnBlocked Cash pilot has shown modest cost-savings and significant time-savings related to
operational activities. Onboarding recipients to the platform was reduced to an average of 3.6 minutes per individual compared to over an hour during the Ambae volcano response in 2018. Additionally, the tested system eliminated slow identity (ID) verifications and reduced dependency on post offices or banks to deposit cheques.
The quality of the tested solution, which encompassed transparency, security, and user experience indicators, was found to be
extremely high. Recipient and vendor feedback alike indicates an overwhelming preference for assistance of this type.
