In 2025, the Algorand Foundation set out to reimagine how cash assistance is delivered worldwide; driven by a conviction that the traditional approach to moving money is no longer fit for purpose. Systems that are slow, opaque, top-down, and inefficient fall short in a world that demands speed, security, and, above all, dignity for recipients.
Our mantra this year has been simple: We go where money isn’t working. And in places like Afghanistan and Syria, we’ve seen the power of this philosophy in action, one wallet, one person, one village at a time.
Afghanistan: scaling what works
Our work with HesabPay reached new heights in Afghanistan in 2025. What began as a bold experiment in blockchain-based humanitarian aid is now a nationwide success story.
More than a million people have received life-saving assistance through HesabPay in 2025, including cash support from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the World Bank. In a country with near-total banking collapse, HesabPay has become a lifeline, allowing people to receive and spend digital currency quickly, securely, and with dignity.
But it doesn’t stop there. HesabPay is now a household utility platform too. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans are using it to pay electricity bills, a use case that proves digital wallets aren’t just for emergencies, they’re for everyday life. For the Foundation, Afghanistan is now a flagship success. It’s a proof-of-concept we can carry into other distressed banking environments.
Syria: from cash to code
Syria is emerging as a critical new context for blockchain-enabled humanitarian assistance and wider international development aid. In 2025, we doubled down on the Foundation’s engagement by working directly on the ground across multiple parts of the country. We partnered with a mixed team of local and international experts and embedded staff in Syria to drive adoption from the field up, grounding technical innovation in operational realities.
We collaborated closely with Mercy Corps and the Syrian NGO and Social Enterprise Pioneers Innovation for Sustainability and Impact on pilots in Syria with HesabPay (building on HesabPay’s success in Afghanistan), demonstrating that stablecoin-based payments can function even in one of the most complex humanitarian environments globally. These pilots showed how digital cash can enhance speed, transparency, and user choice without undermining core humanitarian principles.
Alongside this, our staff have worked side-by-side with UN humanitarian actors and donors across Syria, building trust, co-designing pilot approaches, and navigating the operational and regulatory challenges associated with introducing new payment rails in a transitional context.
Our learnings with HesabPay have been documented by internationally recognized research institutes including the Refugee Law Initiative (University of London), “Durable Solutions in the Digital Age: Decentralised Finance, Cryptocurrency, and the Future of Return in Syria” (July 2025), Mercy Corps Ventures, “How Stablecoins Transformed Aid in Syria - 96% Faster, 60% Cheaper” (October,2025) and PeaceRep (University of Edinburgh and London School of Economics) “From Cash to Code: Payment Rails as Peace Infrastructure in Syria” (December 2025). This groundwork is laying the foundation for what we hope will become a scaled deployment of HesabPay and others on the Algorand network to support refugee return and reintegration in 2026.
We have made sustained field presence a priority, with a strong emphasis on investing in local capacity to lead implementation and adaptation. A dedicated Algorand consultant in Damascus supports local teams through coordination, technical troubleshooting, and relationship-building, helping to reinforce locally driven approaches rather than substitute for them – a role we plan to maintain through 2026. With early results demonstrating feasibility, Syria is proving fertile ground for innovation. We believe it has the potential to become an early example of how blockchain-based humanitarian assistance and wider international development aid can be scaled through locally led systems, supported by targeted international expertise from the private sector.
The Humanitarian Aid Payments Council
If Afghanistan and Syria are our proving grounds, Berlin in September 2025 proved our belief that major institutions, scanning all sectors, are deeply interested in new ways of delivering aid to the most marginalized people in the world.
In Berlin, we convened the Humanitarian Aid Payments Council, bringing together a powerful coalition of actors committed to rethinking how aid money moves.
We were honored to host:
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- UNDP, WFP, UNHCR, Mercy Corps, Mastercard, Visa, Worldpay, Circle, Quantoz, Polysync, Rumsan, Coala Pay, Meld, Paycode, CALP, COAR, St. Vincent de Paul Society, and
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- Academic and government observers from King’s College London, the German Federal Foreign Office (GFFO), and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
The room buzzed with urgency, curiosity, and possibility. We demoed the Aid Trust Portal and watched in real time as payments were made from the USA to rural Syria, debated stablecoin security, and began shaping a new aid infrastructure — fast, transparent, traceable. And most importantly, rooted in real deployments, not just theory.
The Blockchain Academy: training the front lines of aid
To build this future, we need more than code. We need capacity.
That’s why the Foundation’s impact team launched the Blockchain Academy for Humanitarian Aid — a first-of-its-kind training program for UN and NGO staff around the world.
The results have exceeded expectations: hundreds of UN personnel from more than 50 countries enrolled in the program this year. What began as an educational experiment is now considered a core training tool within parts of the UN system, especially among staff in field offices and crisis response units.
We’re teaching not just how blockchain works, but why it matters: the ability to move money more securely than cash and more transparently than anything the aid sector has ever seen.
Changing the journey of money: our work with Paycode
This year we also drove a breakthrough partnership with Paycode, whose offline-first biometric technology is used by over 6 million people across Afghanistan, Ghana, Zambia, Mozambique, Sudan, and the DRC. Our continued collaboration with Paycode will extend blockchain technology to help reach the unbanked even in areas with no internet, no formal ID system, and no financial institutions. We’re not just “reaching the last mile.” We’re starting from it.
Aid Trust Portal: radical transparency for the future of aid
2025 also marked the launch of one of the most important tools in our mission: the Aid Trust Portal.
This platform allows any organization — a government, an NGO, or a donor — to trace every single dollar of aid from sender to recipient, in real time, on-chain.
Imagine a woman in rural Afghanistan with no bank account and no official ID. Through HesabPay and the Aid Trust Portal, her aid can now be received instantly and can be tracked, while at the same time preserving her privacy. While maintaining privacy for individuals with their data and not putting anything identifiable on chain, we are capitalizing on the long touted potential of public blockchains to make aid flows transparent, trustworthy and verifiable. This is how we change the narrative of aid from broken supply chains and leakage to a world where every dollar is visible, every recipient is respected, and every transfer is secure.
Looking ahead: where the journey leads
We’re just getting started. As we move into 2026, we will continue to scale HesabPay in Afghanistan and Syria. We’ll deepen our work with Paycode in Africa. We’ll expand the Blockchain Academy and grow the Humanitarian Aid Payments Council into a standing body that shapes the future of humanitarian finance.
And we’ll keep doing what we’ve done all along — going where money isn’t working, not because it’s easy, but because we have the opportunity and responsibility to use the intrinsic qualities of blockchain to help create a more inclusive and a more just world.
Learn more about 2025 on Algorand
Technical roadmap progress: In 2025, Algorand made meaningful strides across several major roadmap initiatives: On-chain governance, decentralization, developer experience, enterprise readiness and post-quantum resilience.
2025 Hackathons recap: From the vibrant tech hubs of Europe and the US to the booming developer scenes in India and Turkey, we hosted five in-person events that brought together over 500 builders.
2025 Web3 Masterclasses recap: Our free program, delivered online, is designed to onboard founders, non-technical builders, developers, and Web3 newcomers, guiding them through blockchain fundamentals to hands-on building with AlgoKit, AI, and complementary no-code tools.
2025 Ecosystem highlights: The year rewarded long-term believers in blockchain with proof that the technology can scale and support meaningful applications. Across the Algorand ecosystem, builders did what they do best - they shipped.
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