Algorand Foundation Announces Strategic Investment in Digital Payment Platform, HesabPay

HesabPay showcased at the Algorand Impact Summit in New Delhi

NEW DELHI, Dec. 1, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Algorand Foundation announces a strategic investment by Algorand Ventures in HesabPay on stage today at the Algorand Impact Summit in New Delhi, where business leaders, policymakers, NGOs, and developers convened to discuss how blockchain can be part of the solution to the world's most intractable challenges.

Courtesy of HesabPay

HesabPay is the first and only interoperable digital payments platform in Afghanistan, utilizing the speed and reliability of the Algorand blockchain. Initially built as a solution to the humanitarian aid crisis, more than a dozen organizations, including the World Food Programme, have used the platform to send funds directly to beneficiaries in Afghanistan. HesabPay has since expanded its use cases and now allows users to buy airtime, pay electric bills, and send digital funds to other users.  HesabPay has facilitated 51,000 humanitarian cash transfers and has been used to pay over 1.3 million electricity bills.

HesabPay is a critical tool for Afghanistan, where 85% of the adult population is unbanked, according to the World Bank.  A recent study by the London School of Economics (LSE) trailed nearly 2,500 Afghan women receiving aid via HesabPay and found that "digital payments can be an effective and transparent way of helping those most in need." The study found that over 98% of the money transferred digitally was spent as local purchases in the first eight weeks, with the women surveyed reported skipping fewer meals and eating a more nutritionally diverse diet both while receiving the payments and for several weeks afterward.

"In the case of HesabPay, it was apparent to us from the beginning that the solution they are offering was critical for some of the world's most marginalized populations," says Matt Keller, head of impact and inclusion at Algorand Foundation. "It is only fitting that we announced this investment at the Algorand Impact Summit, demonstrating how blockchain can serve as an efficient, reliable, and transparent solution for the global unbanked."

Also at the Impact Summit, Algorand announced partnerships with Mann Deshi, Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

For more information, please visit https://algorand.foundation.

About Algorand Foundation

The Algorand Foundation is dedicated to helping fulfill the global promise of the Algorand blockchain by taking responsibility for its sound monetary supply economics, decentralized governance, and healthy and prosperous open-source ecosystem. Designed by MIT professor and Turing Award winning cryptographer Silvio Micali, Algorand is uniquely capable of delivering on the promise of a borderless global economy. It achieves transaction throughputs at the speed of traditional finance, but with immediate finality, near zero transaction costs, and on a 24/7 basis.