HesabPay Delivers UNHCR Aid to 625,000 Afghan Returnees on Algorand

At the Algorand Foundation, Humanitarian Payments Council, one number stood out:

625,000+ refugee returnees in Afghanistan have now received UNHCR aid through HesabPay, with $35M disbursed.

We interviewed Matthew Keller (Algorand Foundation) and Nigel Pont

(HesabPay/Algorand Foundation) on how blockchain rails are moving humanitarian aid.

Watch the full interview here:

The Algorand-based mobile wallet has disbursed $35 million in UN refugee assistance in Afghanistan.

More than 625,000 refugee returnees and over 17,500 internally displaced people in Afghanistan have received United Nations aid through HesabPay, a mobile payments platform built on the Algorand blockchain, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). The agency has channeled $35 million in assistance through the platform's reloadable cards.

The milestone was detailed by the Algorand Foundation during Algorand’s Humanitarian Payments Council, a group of aid, finance and blockchain organizations that includes UNHCR, Circle, Mastercard, and Mercy Corps Ventures. In an interview with The Defiant on the sidelines of the Council's meeting, HesabPay's Nigel Pont and the Algorand Foundation's Matt Keller described how the program works and where it is headed.

How the program works

HesabPay is regulated by the Central Bank of Afghanistan and holds an electronic money institution license, according to Pont. As returnees arrive in Afghanistan — primarily from Iran and Pakistan — HesabPay and UNHCR open an account for each individual, tied to a basic QR-code card that links to an address on the Algorand blockchain.

UNHCR then credits the account with an Afghani-denominated e-money token, which Pont described as a tokenized deposit backed by funds held in Afghanistan. Recipients can cash out the tokens or spend them across a merchant network.

"It's a very secure, dignified way for them to receive their payments," Pont said. "But it also adds a layer of transparency and accountability to the disbursement, which hasn't been possible historically."

Pont said HesabPay has surpassed one million wallets in Afghanistan, where he estimated that about 6% of the population holds a bank account and less than half of that share among women.

Why blockchain

Keller, who leads impact at the Algorand Foundation, pointed to transaction speed, network uptime and cost as the reasons the platform was built on Algorand. He cited Algorand’s throughput of roughly 10,000 transactions per second, zero downtime, and fees of about 0.001 ALGO or less per transaction.

For Keller, the defining benefit for aid specifically is traceability. "Everything is seeable, and everything is traceable, and all the data that goes onto a blockchain is immutable," he said, adding that this allows donors to see where funds go.

He tied that to the case for public funding of aid, citing the elimination of USAID roughly two years ago, which he said cut about 30% of global aid on the premise that aid spending was corrupt. "One of our biggest desires is to be able to educate policymakers, particularly in the United States, about the traceable benefits of blockchain," Keller said.

Pont said no personally identifiable or demographically identifiable information is placed on-chain, and that HesabPay uses wallet infrastructure to obscure identities. "There is this tension between privacy and transparency with on-chain payments on public chains," he said.

The sanctions question

Pont pushed back on what he called a common misconception that Afghanistan is a sanctioned economy. The country itself is not sanctioned, he said; rather, roughly 20 to 30 individuals appear on sanctions lists, and the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control has issued licenses permitting humanitarian, development and private-sector activity in the country.

He said HesabPay runs a compliance regime with due diligence and KYC checks to ensure sanctioned individuals cannot open accounts or receive funds.

What the research found

A London School of Economics randomized controlled trial studied cash provision through HesabPay to women in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. Pont said the study found recipients could use the technology after the blockchain complexity was abstracted away, and that it delivered dignity benefits.

Previously, he said, women queued for as long as seven or eight hours once a month to collect an envelope of cash in public. Under the program, recipients received an SMS notification and could redeem funds at a time of their choosing at merchant locations across Kabul and other cities.

Beyond aid

Aid is now a non-majority share of flows on HesabPay, Pont said. Users pay utility bills, buy phone airtime and receive salaries through the app. "We're not yet seeing people buy digital money on HesabPay with the cash that's under their mattress to go to the corner shop," he said, adding that broader merchant acceptance would come over time.

The Algorand Foundation first invested in HesabPay in 2023 and has since made additional investments, following a relationship between Keller and Pont that dates back roughly four years. Keller previously worked at the UN World Food Programme, and Pont spent 25 years at Mercy Corps.

What's next

Keller said the Foundation wants to extend the model to other economies in crisis with little banking infrastructure, naming Sudan, Somalia and Yemen as possibilities. "Blockchain is a way to create kind of a quasi-banking infrastructure ex nihilo — out of nothing," he said.