Pilot Insights | How Stablecoins Transformed Aid in Syria—96% Faster, 60% Cheaper
Image Courtesy of Mercy Corps
This is the second article about our stablecoins pilot in Syria, focused on sharing the results and lessons learned. To learn more about the pilot design and learning agenda, see the launch article here
Insights in brief
Efficiency and cost reduction: 96% delivery time reduction (from 28 days to under 1 day) and 60% to 40% cost reduction compared to conventional delivery methods with 94% of every aid dollar reaching participants versus 85% to 90% for previously used modalities.
User adoption despite cultural preferences: 72% of farmers preferred receiving digital payments, 100% of transactions were successful.
Sector-wide implications for compliance: 100% transaction traceability addressing donor compliance requirements in complex regulatory environments.
Syria has been cut off from the international financial system for over a decade. Since 2011, the country has been embroiled in civil war, resulting in heavy sanctions and counter-terrorism financing regulations from countries around the world. In this context, humanitarian actors struggle to deliver financial aid due to the lack of formal banking infrastructure, currency devaluation, and high transfer costs.
The Pilot
In August 2024, Mercy Corps Ventures partnered with HesabPay, a digital payment and financial services platform, and Pioneers Innovation, a local partner in Syria, to deploy stablecoin rails for aid payments to participating farmers and agribusinesses in Northeast Syria.
Aid funds were sent as stablecoins directly from the Mercy Corps treasury in the US to the Mercy Corps Syria country office's HesabPay digital wallet. Funds were then distributed to digital wallets of 100 smallholder farmers, shared between 650-700 people in the Al-Hasakah region based on average household size. Participants could spend the digital money (USDC, pegged to the US Dollar) at participating vendors at their desired pace, without concern for currency fluctuations.
“[Cash transfers in stablecoins are] Better because it’s faster. My rights are protected in my account in a secure manner. No favoritism or loss of notes.”
Pilot Results
Key Impact Findings
· Striking efficiency gains: The pilot achieved a 96% reduction in payment time compared to traditional transfers, with funds reaching participants almost instantly instead of the typical 28-45 day timeline through IMTAs.
· Significant cost savings: Transaction and distribution costs were reduced by 60% compared to traditional cash transfers via IMTAs and by 40% compared to discontinued e-voucher. Through stablecoin rails, 94% of every aid dollar has reached participants versus 90% or 85% through conventional methods (IMTAs and e-vouchers respectively).
· Strong user adoption: Despite cultural preferences for physical cash, 72% of participants prefer to receive aid via stablecoins over cash in the future, citing increased safety (corruption, fraud and theft), speed of transactions and ease of use. 100% successfully used and spent their funds.
· Enhanced transparency and compliance: The pilot provided 100% transaction traceability through blockchain rails, eliminating intermediaries and reducing counterparty risks while meeting donor compliance requirements.
“All the features in the app were very easy to use, clear and without any complications so that both young and old can use it easily. I gained the trust of the people in the region.”
“We try to find smart, effective solutions to deal with the transactions and to make our participants safer in terms of holding cash, which was the goal here…I was pleasantly surprised that people accepted the digital solution over cash, but they were safer and had more privacy in receiving the funds.”
Challenges and Lessons Learned
The learnings from this pilot were multi-fold: a number of technical, social, and operational factors introduced challenges to implementing the original design, while also revealing significant opportunities for scaling stablecoin-based humanitarian aid.
Technical and Infrastructure Barriers
The inability of local mobile phone networks to send PIN codes emerged as the "biggest surprise," requiring a workaround that delivered verification codes via WhatsApp. Additionally, while all participants owned smartphones, some older participants found learning the digital wallet challenging, necessitating extra support and training. Internet connectivity issues were addressed through mobile hotspots placed in central public areas.
Cultural and Adoption Challenges
Strong cultural preferences for cash initially raised concerns about adoption. As project staff noted, "Syrians like to touch physical money," making the 72% preference rate for digital payments particularly significant. The main factors for such a strong preference was improved safety (due to fraud, corruption, theft), speed and ease of use. Vendor hesitation over new technology limited participation, with some declining due to prior relationships with traditional systems. Transaction data shows that both participating vendors cashed out with IMTAs almost immediately after large amounts of payments, potentially indicating a concern about the technology. However, the overwhelming satisfaction of farmers and IMTAs, who used their stablecoin wallets beyond the pilot suggests the affinity for digital cash.
Operational Implementation Insights
The novelty of stablecoins posed initial challenges for collaborative implementation between central management and country offices, requiring new processes around decision-making and staff training on basic concepts. However, strong collaboration between teams helped create clarity around implementation roles. All project staff agreed that disbursement became smoother with each round, with final distributions described as "very smooth."
Regulatory and Market Context
The pilot operated during a period of significant political transition, with regime change in late 2024 and sanction lifting in June 2025. IMTAs noted that this environment was enabling new digital payment frontiers, with one agent citing the ability to rely on HesabPay's processes after political upheaval. International IMTAs viewed the technology as competition, while regional operators saw it as an opportunity for new revenue streams.
“Putting aside the conflict, there was a liquidity crisis in the country [due to 2023 policy changes in Iraq]. If you could get cash in, it would cost dearly.”
Future Implications
Despite implementation challenges, this pilot yielded critical insights for humanitarian organizations and stablecoin builders operating in complex financial environments. The results demonstrate that stablecoins continue to hold significant promise for addressing aid delivery challenges, while gaps around digital literacy, vendor network expansion, and regulatory clarity remain areas for continued development.
The success has directly driven expansion plans: Mercy Corps Syria will grow their portfolio of work using stablecoins for aid delivery in another region later in 2025, providing comparison across different government jurisdictions. Additionally, Mercy Corps Ventures and HesabPay have completed a pilot in Afghanistan (results incoming) that tested the offline-capable physical cards linked to digital wallet accounts.
The implications extend beyond Syria. With growing donor country appetite for fraud-prevention mechanisms in humanitarian aid, stablecoin rails offer a scalable solution for enhancing transparency and reducing costs across the humanitarian sector. As one participating IMTA noted: "The experience was new due to economic sanctions and ban on digital currencies. We hope it will continue as the future will be spent on these applications."
This report is the second of a two-part series. The first blog outlined the pilot launch, our learning questions, and the hypotheses we set out to prove. This final report provides an in-depth study of the market need, the impact of the solution, and the key insights and learnings from the pilot. If you’re short on time, here is a TL;DR case-study.
The evaluation was conducted by independent research partners at Crypto Council for Innovation
Written by Maciej Bulanda, Pilot Manager, Mercy Corps Ventures, and Sandra Uwantege Hart, Humanitarian Lab Lead, Mercy Corps Ventures.