Unblocked Cash – The Documentary
Channel: Oxfam Australia
Date: 2021-07-09

Unblocked Cash is a blockchain-based Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) solution that enables faster, less expensive, and more transparent financial aid for relief efforts. Along with our partners we are changing the way that humanitarian organisations respond to disasters. 

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A year after its ground-breaking pilot, Oxfam in Vanuatu, together with 17 local and international partners, has scaled its blockchain-based UnBlocked Cash project to distribute cash and voucher assistance to over 35,000 beneficiaries affected by the Category 5 Cyclone Harold and COVID-19 in Vanuatu.

#UnBlocked Cash is now serving as a single payment platform to unite partners in the harmonised delivery of cash assistance, enhancing coordination, collective capacity, and ensuring more value for each donor dollar by boosting the local economy. 

Oxfam has also deployed this solution in Papua New Guinea in late 2020 and in the Solomon Islands in 2021, with the Pacific region leading other pilot locations across Oxfam’s global confederation.

Oxfam’s UnBlocked Cash project, powered by Australian fintech Sempo, is tackling the challenges of an increase in humanitarian need and a reduction in resources by reducing the cost of distributing aid by up to 75%, increasing delivery speed by over 90%, and bringing more transparency and accountability to the process.

All of this is possible thanks to a blend of humanitarian assistance, digital financial inclusion, and locally-led blockchain innovation. The UnBlocked Cash solution consists of the e-voucher “tap-and-pay” cards used by beneficiaries, a smartphone app through which vendors receive the payments, and an online platform where NGOs like Oxfam can monitor transactions remotely and in real-time.

In early 2020, Oxfam won a €1M prize from the European Commission to support the development of this humanitarian innovation. The Australian and New Zealand governments are also supporters of the Unblocked Cash Program.

As the program scales, Oxfam’s Vanuatu and Pacific teams hope to inspire other local and international organisations globally to explore how the technology can be replicated and applied across a diversity of programs and countries. If a local team in the remote Pacific Islands can take blockchain, a cutting-edge technology this far in the midst of a global pandemic, it begs the question - where else is this possible, and why isn’t it happening?