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The United Nations Development Programme has signed a new agreement with the Stellar Development Foundation to expand blockchain-based digital payments across its country programmes.
The deal moves the work from live pilots into a repeatable operating framework for UNDP offices that want to use digital payments in development and humanitarian projects.
Pilots Covered 5 Countries
The new phase follows 16 months of work between UNDP and Stellar. The programme included research across 17 countries and live pilots in Haiti, Syria, Kenya, Guatemala and The Gambia. Two other solutions were developed into working prototypes in Colombia and Papua New Guinea.
UNDP said the pilots tested payment delivery in real field conditions, not only in controlled technical settings.
The work was coordinated by UNDP’s Alternative Finance Lab at its Istanbul Regional Hub. The aim now is to give country offices a repeatable process for using blockchain payments when the tool fits local needs.
Syria Distribution Costs Fell to 2%
UNDP said the pilots produced measurable results. In Aleppo, Syria, a Cash for Work programme delivered stipends digitally and recorded each transaction on-chain.
The estimated cost of distribution fell from about 10% of programme funds under conventional methods to about 2%.
Participants still received and cashed out their payments, while the programme gained a traceable record of where the funds went.
Haiti Pilot Kept Payments Running
In Haiti, a pilot built for low-connectivity conditions kept payments running with a 100% success rate even when the cellular network failed during testing.
UNDP said the result showed that blockchain payment tools can work under the infrastructure stress faced by communities in fragile settings.
That matters for humanitarian and development programmes where banking access, mobile coverage and local payment infrastructure can be unreliable.
Stellar Advises While UNDP Runs Delivery
Under the new agreement, Stellar Development Foundation will provide technical advice, network expertise and coordination with providers building inside the UNDP pipeline.
UNDP will remain responsible for programme delivery and implementation. That division matters because the agreement does not turn Stellar into a UN payment operator.
It positions the Stellar network and related open-source tools as infrastructure that UNDP offices can use where appropriate.
UNDP Targets Programme-Scale Adoption
The next phase will focus on governance, onboarding, safeguards and operational guidance. UNDP said the goal is to move tested solutions from its existing pipeline into active use across programmes including humanitarian response, social protection and financial inclusion.
For UNDP, the project is focused on faster, cheaper and more traceable payment rails in places where banking access is limited or infrastructure is unreliable. The agreement will now test whether country offices adopt the payment model beyond the original pilots.
