Pilot Outcomes and Insights

The pilot demonstrated that the use of blockchain smart contracts led to a 75% reduction in transfer costs and a 90% decrease in settlement time compared to traditional transfers. Moreover, the majority of pilot participants reported improvements in their ability to meet major unexpected expenses. For a deeper dive into the pilot findings, refer to the pilot endline report available here.

Scaling up with Ripple

Building on these promising results, Mercy Corps Ventures is collaborating with Ripple, Fortune Credit and DIVA Donate to expand the reach and efficiency of anticipatory cash transfers. The pilot will utilize Ripple’s new stablecoin, RLUSD, on Ethereum as the payout token, demonstrating its applicability in humanitarian aid and disaster relief. Additionally, the DIVA Donate protocol will utilize the FEWS NDVI dataset, and has updated the trigger computation methodology to be less susceptible to the effects of cloud cover.

“Our mission is to provide products that enhance financial inclusion but we found that some of our target customers such as pastoralists could not afford to pay the insurance premiums we charged…so we decided to seek out partners such as DIVA…, that could enable us to expand our reach to offer solutions to vulnerable populations that are largely ignored by traditional financial institutions”

Janet Kuteli | Founder & CEO — Fortune Credit

“Since the last pilot with Mercy Corps Ventures, we’ve made several improvements to our DIVA Donate platform to improve the donor experience as well as the robustness of the setup. In particular, we’ve streamlined web3 onboarding with social logins and embedded wallets, improved app performance across the board, and integrated more reliable drought trigger data. We’ve also centralized our blog and added new features like a donor leaderboard to foster transparency. We are committed to building web3-based applications that make a real-world impact.”

Wladimir Weinbender | Founder & CEO — DIVA Technologies

Call to Action

The pilot campaign has a target of $40,000 which will cover up to 500 pastoralists. Participating in the campaign is simple if you have a browser wallet funded with RLUSD on Ethereum. Just visit divadonate.xyz, connect your wallet, enter the amount you wish to contribute, click “Deposit” and confirm the transaction in your wallet.

Stay tuned for updates, evidence, and insights on our other Mercy Corps Ventures pilots, responsibly testing Web3 solutions for unbanked and underbanked populations in emerging markets.