The United Nations Development Programme has signed a new agreement with the Stellar Development Foundation to expand blockchain-based digital payments across its country offices after pilots in five countries showed lower costs and stronger payment access.
The new phase moves the initiative beyond limited testing and toward regular use in UNDP programme delivery. UNDP announced on Monday that the agreement will set up the governance, onboarding and safeguards needed for country offices to use blockchain-based payments across humanitarian response, social protection and financial inclusion work.
UNDP moves from pilots to wider use
UNDP said the decision follows 16 months of work with the Stellar Development Foundation. The two partners researched digital payments across 17 countries and ran live pilots in Haiti, Syria, Kenya, Guatemala and The Gambia. They also built working prototypes in Colombia and Papua New Guinea.
The work was coordinated by UNDP’s Alternative Finance Lab at the Istanbul Regional Hub. The next step will focus on making blockchain payments easier for country offices to adopt without treating each rollout as a separate experiment. UNDP said the agreement will also move approved solutions from the existing pipeline into active use.
The Stellar Development Foundation will provide technical support and coordinate with builders in the Stellar ecosystem. UNDP will keep responsibility for delivery and programme use. The agreement runs through 2027 and will end with a scaling playbook, evidence base and formal handover.
Syria and Haiti pilots show lower costs
UNDP said the pilots produced practical results. In Aleppo, Syria, UNDP delivered Cash for Work stipends digitally and recorded each transaction on-chain. The agency said the model reduced the estimated cost of distribution from about 10 percent of funds under conventional methods to about two percent.
The Haiti pilot tested payments under weak connectivity. UNDP said the system kept working with a 100 percent success rate even when the cellular network failed during testing. Payments settled almost instantly under local conditions.
“We have shown that digital payments can reach the people that conventional systems miss, and in some of the hardest places to operate. The work now is to make that capability ordinary, so that a country office can use it with confidence as part of how it already works, rather than treating each deployment as an experiment,” stated Robert Pasicko, UNDP Alternative Finance Lab.
“These pilots showed what open, public blockchain infrastructure can do when it is built around the realities of the last mile. We are proud to continue this work with UNDP and to help turn a set of successful pilots into a durable part of how development and humanitarian finance is delivered,” noted Candace Kelly, Chief Legal Officer at the Stellar Development Foundation.
These results matter for aid and development programs because delivery costs and network outages can slow down payments. The pilots also gave programs a traceable record of where funds went, which can help teams monitor delivery more clearly.
UN blockchain work expands beyond payments
The new Stellar agreement follows UNDP’s broader blockchain work. In June, UNDP launched a Blockchain Advisory Group during Proof of Talk 2026 in Paris. The group brings together blockchain organizations to study how the technology can support development, digital public infrastructure and stronger public systems.
UNDP stated that the first advisory group meeting focused on financial inclusion and digital finance. The discussion covered fragmented payment systems, digital identity limits, interoperability and institutional readiness. Stellar Development Foundation is one of the 26 member organizations in the group.
UNDP said its broader blockchain work spans Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia, and Asia-Pacific. The agency is studying uses in digital payments, climate finance, digital identity, traceability, public procurement and public service delivery.
The latest agreement gives that work a clearer payment track. It also shows that public blockchain systems are moving from small trials toward more structured use in development finance.
Stellar’s payment role keeps growing
The UNDP deal adds to Stellar’s wider payment push. As previously reported by The Coin Headlines, Bermuda announced a partnership with Stellar in May to move key financial services on-chain. The plan aimed to lower payment costs and support faster money movement across the island’s financial system.
Bermuda wanted a “fully onchain economy,” where digital assets would become part of national financial services. It also noted that local merchants were paying three percent to five percent in card fees, with effective payment processing costs sometimes rising to about 10 percent.
MoneyGram and the Stellar Development Foundation also renewed a multi-year partnership in April to expand stablecoin services. The rollout uses USDC on the Stellar blockchain to move funds across borders, with Colombia and El Salvador named among early markets.
The MoneyGram service allows recipients to hold funds in USDC or convert them into local currency through retail locations. As The Coin Headlines reported, the model is designed to make cross-border payments faster and cheaper for users who still depend on cash access.
UNDP’s expanded use of Stellar-based digital payments now places the same payment infrastructure in a development and humanitarian setting. The agency has not described the new phase as a full global rollout.
Instead, it is building the rules, safeguards and operating steps that country offices can use when blockchain payments fit local program needs.
