- Mercy Corps partnered with HesabPay to pilot a stablecoin-based humanitarian aid payment system for 100 smallholder farmers in Northeast Syria. The program reached over 400 people, delivering $30,000 in USDC for agricultural inputs to support livelihoods.
- The initiative achieved a 96% drop in payment time (from average of 28 days to less than 1 day) and a 60% cost reduction compared to traditional informal money transfer agents, delivering more aid per dollar in a safer and faster way, directly to participants’ phones.
- Stablecoin rails provided 100% transaction traceability, eliminating all intermediaries and reducing counterparty risks for humanitarian organizations operating in regions where reliance on informal money transfers is common.
- With 72% of participants preferring stablecoin payments over cash in future programming, the pilot demonstrates the viability of blockchain-based payment systems.
- Read the full report.
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.
Rebuilding Livelihoods in Conflict-Affected Syria
For more than a decade, Syria has been cut off from the international financial system. Civil conflict since 2011, for example, has hollowed out formal banking and the traditional avenues NGOs have used for assistance. As a result, humanitarian actors in Northeast Syria face severe barriers to delivering aid: collapsed banking rails, rapid currency devaluation, and high transfer costs that have reduced available cash for operations by over 35%.
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 high transaction fees sometimes reaching 20% during intense conflicts.
The HesabPay pilot leveraged a blockchain-based payment system to address these challenges. Working in partnership with Mercy Corps and local partner Pioneers Innovation, the HesabPay platform distributed stablecoin payments directly to participating farmers’ digital wallets. This approach eliminated the need for intermediaries, reduced costs, and provided complete transaction transparency.
A mobile wallet enabled farmers to receive USDC payments and spend them at participating local agricultural vendors. The app’s interface was designed to be accessible for users with varying levels of digital literacy, with robust training and support provided throughout implementation. Vendors could then off-ramp or “cash out” their stablecoin balances through participating IMTAs to receive local currency.
According to the report, over three months in early 2025 this pilot engaged 100 farmers, providing financial support to 400-500 people across 10 communities in the Al-Hasakah governorate. Surveys and interviews indicate that HesabPay delivered faster access to aid and improved participants’ sense of security and privacy. The pilot achieved a 100% spend rate, with all funds used for intended agricultural purposes at participating vendors.
The use of blockchain rails enabled:
- Wallet-to-wallet transfers from Mercy Corps treasury directly to recipients, with no 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 and lower distribution costs than 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. In these contexts, new financial rails can not only step in immediately, but deliver aid that is transparent, and cost-effective.
Building on these results, Mercy Corps Syria will deploy a second stablecoin payment intervention in another region, enabling comparison across jurisdictions as Syria’s regulatory and financial landscape evolves. Additionally, Mercy Corps and HesabPay are piloting offline-capable stablecoin payments in Afghanistan to support communities with limited connectivity.
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 Corp and Crypto Council Partnership
Mercy Corps Ventures has invested $2+ million in seed funding to Web3 pilot projects that address the climate disaster. Its investments focus on projects utilizing Web3 technologies to enhance vital areas such as resource coordination, insurance, and financial services in regions susceptible to climate adversities. The goal is to not only counteract the effects of climate change 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 to build climate resilience for the 3.3B people around the world whose daily lives are vulnerable to climate change.
