According to the Irish Times report, Oxfam is piloting the Ethereum-based platform with benefit corporation Emerging Impact along with an Australian tech firm Sempo in Vanuatu. UnBlocked Cash, the Irish project, garnered the grant from the European Innovation Council to run the second phase of the pilot.
In June 2019, Oxfam reported that it had spent a month on completing phase one of the first phase using Maker DAO’s stable coin DAI for helping the disaster victims. The project aims to deliver aid in the form of a smart voucher.
In the first phase of the pilot, at least 200 residents in the villages of Pango and Mele Maat received tap-and-pay cards, loaded with about $50 in DAI. These cards were used for payments across a network of local stores and schools with a total of 32 vendors.
According to the Times, the second phase of the pilot will include more than 5,000 participants and 100 vendors. Oxfam claimed that it pitched the project to a jury in Brussels and was one of 24 projects that were picked from 178 applications.
The Irish charity also claimed that the project has cut delivery times for aid by 96% and cut transaction cost by 60%. The grant will also let Oxfam scale the project all over the Pacific region and explore its potential in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean as Times reported.
The reports say that a future plan is seeking to address the needs of over 2.7 million vulnerable people across the entire Pacific region. They are also planning to expand use across the Oxfam Confederation, which currently reached across 90 countries, consisting of 22.3 million people in 2018.
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