CGAP Puts Stellar & Algorand in Humanitarian Spotlight

The report examines whether stablecoins can help humanitarian organizations move funds across borders when correspondent banking is slow, expensive or unavailable.

It identifies high fees, opaque foreign-exchange margins, multi-day settlement delays and banks exiting high-risk jurisdictions as recurring obstacles for aid delivery.

The presenter highlights CGAP’s explanation that stablecoins operate on blockchain networks and that the choice of network affects cost, speed and availability. Stellar is named as an example of a chain on which USDC can operate, while the report reportedly says that lower-cost chains such as “Stellar or Algorand” are commonly used in humanitarian implementations.

One Sudan example involves the Norwegian Refugee Council using the KoalaPay platform to transfer USDC to local disbursement partners. According to All In Crypto's reading of the report, KoalaPay operates on Stellar and Base, while local partners convert USDC into Sudanese pounds before delivering funds to recipients.

The report also references a Ukraine program launched in December 2022 using Stellar’s Aid Assist platform, MoneyGram and self-custodied wallets. The video says the program had distributed $4.6 million to 2,500 households by its second year.

Algorand (ALGO) features in an Afghanistan case study involving Mercy Corps and HesabPay. The report describes HesabPay as a digital platform built on Algorand that transferred a local afghani-denominated stablecoin to recipient wallets, according to the commentator.

The report’s more restrained message is that stablecoins can improve cross-border market access and fund traceability, but they do not eliminate foreign-exchange, cash-out and compliance challenges. Even where on-chain fees are fractions of a cent, local conversion and off-ramp networks remain expensive operational requirements.

CGAP also warns that direct-to-recipient models can shift FX risk, cash-out costs and digital-literacy burdens toward recipients, often those with the fewest alternatives. That caveat matters in fragile markets where merchant acceptance and reliable agent networks may be limited.

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