UN to push digital upgrade of refugee relief funding with support from Circle

The United Nations (UN) will digitally upgrade its cross-border refugee relief funding delivery system with support from stablecoin issuer Circle.

According to Cointelegraph on the 22nd (local time), the Circle Foundation said it provided an international grant at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, to support the UN Treasury Digital Hub (DHoTS). The support will be used to build digital financial infrastructure aimed at streamlining fund-transfer procedures and improving efficiency across the UN system.

Circle did not disclose the grant’s specific size or structure, but said the funding would help process transfers of monetary value within the UN ecosystem more quickly and transparently. The partnership follows earlier collaboration in 2022, when Circle and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) rolled out USDC-based relief payments for Ukrainian refugees.

Alexander De Croo, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said, “Stablecoin-based payment methods are a means to maximize the efficiency of relief funding even in a constrained budget environment.” Circle added that adopting digital financial infrastructure and stablecoins could cut the cost of delivering humanitarian aid by up to 20%.

Barham Salih, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said, “This project is an effort to use technology to safeguard the dignity and choice of forcibly displaced people while increasing real-world impact per dollar donated.”

Circle said that roughly $38 billion a year in global humanitarian funding still relies on legacy financial systems, and that a shift to digital finance could significantly improve the speed and transparency of aid delivery. Circle launched the Circle Foundation last December with the goal of strengthening financial inclusion and resilience, and the UN support marks the foundation’s first international public-interest project.