Digital Financial Inclusion portfolio
The portfolio, led by UNDP AltFinLab, helps UNDP, governments, and partners explore how digital payment infrastructure can make financial systems faster, more transparent, and more inclusive.
Accelerating the future of digital payments for development
Across many countries where UNDP works, money still moves slowly. Salaries reach health workers weeks late, humanitarian assistance is delayed by complex banking chains, and the cost of sending small payments to remote communities can exceed the value of the payment itself. The Digital Financial Inclusion Portfolio, led by UNDP AltFinLab, helps UNDP, governments, and partners explore how digital payment infrastructure can make financial systems faster, more transparent, and more inclusive, so that funds reach people more quickly, at lower cost, and with greater accountability.
Through partnerships with blockchain infrastructure providers and fintech innovators, the portfolio tests and validates digital payment solutions, including stablecoin-based payment rails, across development and humanitarian contexts. The aim is to identify practical pathways for institutional adoption while strengthening the efficiency, traceability, and accessibility of public and development finance.
Our focus
The Digital Financial Inclusion Portfolio provides a structured pathway from exploration to the implementation and scaling of blockchain-based payment solutions. It supports and collaborates with UNDP country offices, other UN agencies, technology providers, and government partners for transitioning toward secure, traceable, and scalable digital payment infrastructure. The portfolio’s work extends to ecosystem research, country-level advisory, and support for institutional adoption.
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Diagnose
We work with UNDP country offices and partners, including governments, NGOs, and the private sector, to map digital payment ecosystems and identify bottlenecks where public funds move slowly, costs are unnecessarily high, or access remains limited. To date, the portfolio has produced ecosystem diagnostics across seventeen country contexts, informing UNDP country-level strategies, regulatory dialogue, and the design of new pilots.
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Accelerate
Through the SDG Blockchain Accelerator and other tailored support mechanisms, the portfolio helps promising digital payment solutions move from concept to implementation. Tech solution providers receive technical, regulatory, and partnership support, as well as opportunities to connect with UNDP and partners interested in piloting new payment infrastructure in development and humanitarian contexts.
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Pilot
Promising solutions are run inside UNDP programmes, and tested under real constraints. Pilots have been delivered or designed across Haiti, The Gambia, Guatemala, Colombia, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, and Syria, covering use cases that range from health worker salaries to crisis cash assistance to diaspora remittances. Each pilot is measured on settlement speed, cost, transparency, and what beneficiaries actually experience.
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Scale and adopt
The portfolio works with UN agencies, government partners, and follow-on funders to take successful pilots beyond a single country and support their broader adoption. This includes addressing the regulatory, procurement, and operational requirements needed to integrate new payment infrastructure into large institutions and public systems.
Accelerating the future of digital payments for development
Explore our digital financial inclusion pilots and how they are testing new approaches to delivering funds faster, more transparently, and more inclusively to communities around the world.
At a glance
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7
countries with live blockchain payment pilots
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17
country payment ecosystems assessed through research and diagnostics
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13
solution providers supported across two accelerator cohorts
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3
pilots implemented in Haiti, Guatemala, and The Gambia
Guatemala
Remittances: Reimagined for all
In Guatemala, a woman with hearing loss navigated a digital payment platform designed for simplicity and found that what traditional banking had long denied her simply worked. Explore how a remittance tool is opening doors for people often overlooked by financial systems.
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Haiti
When the network went down, the pilot kept going
A blockchain payment pilot in Haiti achieved a 100% transaction success rate despite severe connectivity disruption – an experience that is helping inform the future of digital disbursements for a national health programme.
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The Gambia
The agent who closed his shop and came to the people
Find out how traditional financial service providers can adapt to and support emerging digital payment solutions.
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Partners
UNDP AltFinLab works with global partners across technology, academia, finance, and civil society to make alternative finance and emerging tech work for people and planet.
Get in touch
Drop us an email at innovation@undp.org