The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has announced a major expansion of its partnership with the Stellar Development Foundation, moving from experimental pilots to a long-term plan that will integrate Stellar blockchain payments as a standard tool across all its country offices. The deal, set to run through 2027, formalizes a collaboration that began over 16 months ago and follows almost two years of trials and evaluations in 17 countries.
Initial pilot programs were conducted in Haiti, Syria, Kenya, Guatemala, and the Gambia, with working prototypes also built for Colombia and Papua New Guinea. The field tests delivered tangible results: in Aleppo, Syria, a Cash for Work programme saw distribution costs drop from 10% using conventional banking to just 2% via blockchain, with every participant receiving their payments satisfactorily. The Haiti pilot achieved a 100% payment success rate. The UNDP highlighted that the immutable ledger provided a complete public audit trail, boosting donor confidence and drastically reducing opportunities for fraud.
Under the new agreement, the UNDP will establish a governance and onboarding structure, integrate existing payment tools into country-level programmes, and expand blockchain-based payments across multiple facets of humanitarian work. The Stellar Development Foundation will provide technical advisory and coordinate with ecosystem developers, while the UNDP retains full operational control. The goal is to have a fully developed governance framework, implementation guide, and operational standards by 2027, making blockchain payments a permanent capability for global relief efforts.
The move aligns with a growing trend of stablecoin and blockchain adoption in regions with limited banking access. Former UN under-secretary-general Vera Songwe recently argued at the World Economic Forum that stablecoins are "becoming more important than aid" in some developing economies, as they allow the unbanked to save in inflation-resistant currencies via smartphones. This broader context underscores the significance of the UNDP–Stellar partnership as a practical use case with the potential to reshape humanitarian finance.
