Circle and UN agencies announce a stablecoin-based payment system that delivers aid quickly, ensures transparency, and builds trust among donors and beneficiaries
At Davos 2026, Circle and UN agencies argued that shrinking aid budgets require not just more money, but better financial infrastructure. With humanitarian funding described as having “shrunk by 50% in the course of 2024,” the panel framed stablecoin-based payments as a pragmatic response: faster delivery, lower fees, and end-to-end transparency. Circle’s Elisabeth Carpenter said the UN is still moving “tens of billions of dollars a year… on legacy rails,” where cross-border transfers are slow and costly. Using USDC, Circle’s dollar-backed stablecoin, a UNHCR pilot delivering assistance to Ukrainian refugees cut payment times from “weeks… in less than a day,” while improving “real time, traceability and visibility of the payments.”
UNHCR emphasized operational impact and accountability. The agency has scaled cash-based assistance so refugees can decide what they need, but traditional banking is “not really set up to be paying a refugee on the Chad Sudanese border.” The new Digital Hub of Treasury Solutions, initiated by UNHCR and now involving “15 UN agencies,” aims to create a shared platform with “frictionless payments,” strengthening donor confidence by showing “exactly where the money is going.”
Both sides stressed trust and dignity: “Trust is the ultimate currency,” Carpenter said, and faster, safer payments help beneficiaries receive support “with dignity.”
Okay, so what's your timing? I mean, we'll see.
We'll see how interesting you are. I'm pretty tight. Pretty tight.
How interesting. Okay, great.
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this discussion of modernizing humanitarian finance digital infrastructure for faster, more transparent aid. I know that a lot else has been going on today, and we're competing with Post-speech spin from the president and his, and the commentators. But I think we all know that the development and humanitarian aid sectors are going through a tumultuous time where there is an enormous need for rethinking systems of delivery, but also systems of finance. And we're going to get into the systems of finance today with a panel high in quality but not in quantity. So the discussion will be especially interesting, I hope. With us is Elizabeth Carpenter, I think a founder of circle.
I employee. I would say I'm an OG, yes.
A founding employee of.
Circle about ten years.
But now in the very interesting position of both being the chief strategic engagement officer and of circle and the founding chair of the Circle Foundation. So sitting both on the corporate side and on the philanthropic side, and secondly, at late notice, thank you very much to you and Watson from the United Nations High Commission on Refugees for agreeing to stand in, unfortunately called to other matters. I will just say a couple of things by way of introduction. Then I'll invite Elizabeth and Ewan to say a little bit about their partnership, which I think is very interesting and exciting. And then, after a short discussion amongst the three of us, happy to take any questions from all of you, just in very crude terms, we know that more or less $200 billion was the, Oda budget, the overseas development assistance budget in 2024. We also know that 2025 was a year of enormous cuts from traditional donors. And speaking from the humanitarian perspective, I should have probably said, I'm the president of the International Rescue Committee. The humanitarian aid sector has more or less shrunk by 50% in the course of 2024. Interestingly enough, the US Congress has recently submitted to both the House and the Senate, submitted the president, or submitted submitted to the president a new budget for this year that rescinds quite a lot of the cuts that were in the proposed administration budget. But however, that traditional aid discussion plays out the need for new thinking about how to finance, not just humanitarian sector, but also what we mean by development finance, I think comes into very sharp relief. We're doing some work in a companion sector to the one we're going to discuss today, which is the idea of debt swaps. There's been a long history of environmental debt swaps. There has never been a humanitarian debt swap. We're quite keen to work on that. I think that's especially important in a macroeconomic environment where some of the poorest countries in the world are finding that their debt repayments are much higher than their health budgets or even their health and education budgets combined. So there's a lot going on in the financial space because a lot needs to go on. And that makes the initiative that circle have have taken circle critical in the stable coin and will maybe get into the distinctions here. But in the stablecoin sector, what their initiative and their expertise offers to those of us on the ground in some of the toughest places in the world. And there's no one better to kick that off than you. Elizabeth, you've been thinking about this, but you also bring a personal passion to this, and I think it's worth giving you the floor, for 4 or 5 minutes just to talk about how you see circle's role, given the times that we're living in.
Yeah. So first of all, thank you very much to Wecf for enabling us to have this conversation. It's a very important one. And thank you, David, for moderating this. And I would also say thank you to to you both for what you do and for those in the audience who are one way or the other, directly or indirectly doing what they can to maximize assistance to the people who who need it most. Goodness knows, there's a lot of people who are in need, and we can help. If we can help them, we should. So, today we are, I'm personally drawn to this just because the the my entire life, I'm the daughter of immigrants. And, we, you know, we grew up better than most, but definitely not as as well as some. And, and my parents really ingrained in me, giving back in whatever way you can, and, and that stuck with me. And so, frankly, every job I've had, I've tried to figure out how to give back through that job, but also just personally. And it's such a privilege to work with a company and to have helped create a company like circle, where our mission is our product and our product is our mission. The mission of the company is to raise global economic prosperity through the frictionless exchange of value. And I get to do that as my job. Like it's just it's it doesn't get much better than that. And so, whether I was in my chief operating officer capacity driving that mission for commercial gain, and now I'm driving that mission for to make the world a better place and to truly do what we can to raise global economic prosperity. So today, we are announcing, a very exciting grant that we have made through, the Circle Foundation. And the Circle Foundation was created last year, to essentially, assist, make use its grantmaking capacity, to assist programs that are working to, increase financial inclusivity and resilience, for, for the communities that we all collectively serve. And the first international grant we're making is to, a project known as, the Digital Hub of Treasury Solutions, which we'll talk about in a little bit. And it's the perfect expression of, of our mission. So, to basically as, as many of you know, the UN and distributes tens of billions of dollars a year and, to help people in need in a variety of ways. Some organizations do that for direct financial assistance, in humanitarian crises. Others are working on more, perhaps on the development finance side of the House. But no matter how you how you look at that, the reality is, is that movement of value is happening on legacy rails. And for anyone here who has ever tried to make a cross-border payment, for example, it is fraught with friction. It is the two largest examples of that are the cost of making a cross-border transaction transaction and the time it takes. So we at circle, we have we're building an internet financial platform, one component of which a key component of which, is something known as Usdc, which is a stablecoin, US dollar coin. And we have seen the power of this platform we're building, including with the power of Usdc itself and all the other different applications we're building. On top of that, we've seen what happens when when finance is modernized and the, the one of the frankly coolest illustrations of that is the work we've done with UNHCR. So in 2022, we started a pilot to enable UNHCR to get aid, to Ukrainian refugees. And through this we literally can see and it's tangible, the benefits of modern finance, of digital finance, of an internet financial platform is tangible because we saw, payments being made, in, you know, that would have taken weeks. They were happening in less than a day. Significant cost savings, real time, traceability and visibility of the payments. You can see it going from A to B to C, and, perhaps most importantly, the beneficiaries could receive aid faster, safely and with dignity. So that was just a pilot. It's still ongoing today. But we knew what UNHCR and other UN organizations were trying to do, to, to kind of systematize this. And so we thought when we when we created the Circle Foundation last year, we thought, well, what what better way to leverage that grantmaking capacity than to support a project that is more than a project? It's a full blown I mean, I'll let you express the right word, but it's a full blown, systems level investment. That UNHCR had the initial idea for. It now serves 15 plus agencies, as I understand. And they're building a shared platform to distribute value across all of the UN, agencies. And to do that with digital finance and, and do it with, with, you know, leveraging the very technology that our ecosystem represents. So it's it's incredibly thrilling to be able to have that that opportunity because modern humanitarian finance needs, modern infrastructure. And, and we're here to help make that happen. So with this grant, what we expect to see is more of what we saw with the, with the Ukrainian example, we expect to see significant cost savings. We expect to see, significant savings in time. We expect that there will be, real time visibility and traceability of the funds. And for the beneficiaries, they will be able to receive wherever this money is going in the UN ecosystem and its beneficiaries, they will receive money safely, securely, and, and and with and be able to do that with dignity. The other kind of through line with all of that is trust. Trust is the ultimate currency. And this this kind of investment that in technology that the UN organizations are making enables trust between institutions, partners, donors and very importantly, the beneficiaries themselves. So we are just absolutely thrilled and delighted and feel utterly privileged to be able to participate in this way. And, and it's just, you know, for a company that has a mission to raise global economic prosperity and has created a foundation to do it, do what it can in that, in that, in that direction. This is about the best expression of that ever.
Elizabeth, just let me ask one follow up and then I'll go to you. And, should we think about this more as a transformation of the infrastructure and payments of supplies? And, or should we see it as a transformation in payments direct to clients?
It's all of the above. I mean, basically wherever what the UN might use it for, I'll leave it to the UN to talk about. But, essentially anywhere money flows for whatever reason, whether it's getting money from A to B across borders, whether it's over time, credit and lending, anywhere where money flows, anywhere where there's where there's a movement of value, you know, you're currently using currencies that are traditional currencies, use digital currencies, which are literally tied exactly one for one to the, the fiat currency. And it can enable an explosion of opportunity. The way to think about it is it's kind of like, you know, back in the, the relative dawn of the internet, when we were maybe, let's call it, I don't know, the late 90s and the most that I'll just speak for my own experience, you know, I thought about the internet as this kind of cool thing, and, oh, wow, I could email people. I have an AOL account, and that's kind of cool. And what we all kind of understood at that time was that communication was able to go from A to B and B to C and maybe D to Z or whatever, and that was happening in, in real time. I there was, you know, very little cost. It was seemed that securely my, my messages would arrive somewhere else. It didn't matter what hour of the day, it didn't matter what continent the person was on. Communication was just free flowing. That was kind of essentially the, the, you know, the essential commodity at that base layer. And then if I told my if I told myself in 1997, where is this going to go? What's this internet going to become? And someone really smart came to me and said, well, imagine what you can do if you start layering on top of that, GPS and payments and two sided marketplaces. Oh my gosh, I just described Uber or Airbnb. You know, this is where we are right now is we are building that the these fundamental layers of this international internet financial system. And we are enabling, you know, we we invest a lot in developer ecosystem as well so that applications can start getting built on top of this. And then you will see everywhere where money moves everywhere there's money's tentacles is going. This will uplift that and significantly, significantly improve the way things are done.
Great. Thanks, Ian. Tell us about your partnership with circle or UNHCR's partnership with circle and how you how your organization sees this?
Well, we are really delighted with this partnership. I have to say, they say that that out of crisis comes opportunity, and it also comes with a certain drive towards innovation, finding new solutions. And that's certainly that sense of the need to do that, the need to both find solutions in the midst of a humanitarian funding crisis that really kicked off in earnest, if you will, last year. But we were already feeling that some of the side effects of that in previous years. Elizabeth, you mentioned it was sort of 21, 22 that we that we launched this pilot, if you will. But really, this grant from the from circle is enormously important because it, it is, in a way, a perfect marriage of different things and, and the expression of something that the humanitarian industry, if you will, needs to do. It needs to be able to show clear donor accountability and be able to to be able to point to exactly where the money is going. And this particular partnership really allows us to do that. The other thing is, I mean, I started in the humanitarian world 20 odd years ago. A lot has changed since then, and one of the ways that it has changed is the direct assistance to refugees, to other peoples in need, other people in need through cash. The thinking being that those people know more about what they need than we do as the UN or another humanitarian organization. And they will buy what they need in that particular moment to survive. And they don't need a handout that might not actually fit their needs. So as a result, we have really scaled the delivery of cash based assistance to, to refugees around the world. That then typically transforms into a sort of a prepaid card that they can go and spend in, in a local shop. And this partnership allows us to make those transactions in real time. At a fraction or zero cost compared to the sort of, the transaction cost that we were having going through the typical banking sector, which is not really set up to be paying a refugee on the Chad Sudanese border, where I was just last week. So, my particular pathway into this was working with refugees in London 25 years ago. They'd arrived from, there. Many of them were Kurds. They arrived in London. They were fleeing persecution, to, meeting refugees who had just fled Sudan last week. Really having fled with absolutely nothing and in dire need of immediate assistance. And that immediacy in terms of potential, giving them the immediate assistance they need so that they can buy what they need, they can have the means to survive is really, really critical. And, I'm very, very grateful to circle for enabling us to pursue what I think was was the initial kind of brainchild of UNHCR, who our Treasury and digital people thought, okay, maybe we can pursue this, but we really needed the experts to come on board and help hold our hand. And you've done that so wonderfully. And yes, you're right. So the digital hub of Treasury Solutions is something that UNHCR, created. But now really the aim is to support the entire UN, ecosystem and beyond in terms of those frictionless payments, which means that there's no transaction fees and it gets to where it needs to promptly. And ultimately, I mentioned donor accountability. That is an important thing. We're hearing a lot of donors, raise the volume on that request. And it's understandable. But beyond that sort of basic accountability piece, there's also just making the best of the money that we receive and making sure that more of it gets in the hands of refugees in need. And that is what this project, I think we can call it, aims to do.
Great. Thank you so much. You and just say a little bit about this, Elizabeth. How do the the two sides of this, the corporate and the philanthropic reinforce each other?
Well, as I mentioned earlier, our mission, to raise global economic prosperity through the frictionless exchange of value, is we've had that mission from day one. So, we always we were we were doing this work, we were looking for opportunities to leverage our product to do good in the world. As soon as we, you know, recognize the potential of it, we started trying to find opportunities, to work with organizations that were, that could benefit in particular benefit from, from the technology and from from its benefits. So, it's it's actually a very it's in many respects a much more organic evolution for our company than it would be from another company that is just using its corporate treasure, perhaps from going public or what have you, to give money to something that has perhaps absolutely nothing to do with what the company actually does. But for us, we can, enable financial inclusion and, resilience, with our product. But at the same time, we can supercharge that. And what if we just supercharged in making grants to enable the embrace of technology? That will help organizations that right now, in particular, are are, are facing some hard times, squeeze more out of every dollar. And also when you when you embrace technology in the way the UN has another benefit is that the people doing the work at the UN today, if you're trying to move value on traditional rails, they're spending time in an analog world tracing cash flows, etcetera, and they are freed up to start spending more time with the people that they're actually serving this. We've seen this across technology evolutions over time, where people's time is freed up because the technology does things that only a human could do. And then when the human no longer has to do it, they can manage that process. But now that human is able to go do more, and that's very much the case here as well. So for us, it's a, it's it's just a natural evolution, that we can do this on both sides of the equation. And, and it's why like, who gets to do this for their full time job? I mean, it's like.
I know we have one media representative here. And in recognition of your loyalty to the humanitarian cause, I think we should give you the opportunity to ask a question if you want to. But last question to so you can rev up one last question to the panel. What's the potential of this? What will we be talking about in three years time, do you think.
Do you want to go first?
Well, I hope what we will be talking about is a world in which we have, to the extent possible, reduced the aid dependency of refugees. Refugees have the unfortunate fate, sometimes of having fled conflict, persecution, landing in a camp in a neighboring country, and then just being trapped there in a sort of a parallel ecosystem, receiving aid. That's ultimately not something that we want. What we want is for refugees to be included in the national systems where they live. And part of that inclusion is financial inclusion. Being able to access sure education, work, healthcare, but also, banking systems and financial services. And I think that this is the kind of thing we would hope would circle to be able to scale up and move forward in the future.
Moving from just inclusion to resilience and doing more anticipatory work. So I think in three years time, I would expect that we will have seen some of these public private partnerships really scale. I think the work we're doing with the UN is, is just is going to be a launchpad. I think others will look at it and say, I want that, I want to do that as well. There are so many, organizations, NGOs, nonprofits alike approaching us now because they're hearing these stories. So the more we can get these stories out, I think there will be a lot more shared platforms also, so that, aid organizations and other forms of financial assistance can be done across shared platforms. Which will also help with economies of scale. I think governance is extremely important. And I think trust we will be in a place in three years where there will be even more trust than there already is in this technology. And most importantly, there will be that many more people in the world who can benefit from technology like this, that can actually give them if we can get more into their hands faster, then we should be able to move them from subsistence into resilience faster as well as you're saying. And that would that's really that's that's that's the end game here.
Great. Speak now or forever hold your peace.
Thank you so much. Hi everyone. I'm Alyssa from Devex. Okay, I have a couple questions. I'll start with one, though. I guess I'm curious. I know this began the pilot in 2021. You said. Right.
2022, 2022.
So I'm curious how, if any, in any way this has changed with the humanitarian reset from the UN and just how the kind of ebbs and flows of of how the United Nations has found itself has changed the course of this project. Did it influence it at all? And my second question, if I can, is we're talking about a storied institution with many different arms and avenues, and then you bring something like, you know, stablecoin and then you're talking about, you know, exchanging seamlessly very corporate speak. And I'm just curious how that kind of process went, translating that to an institution like the UN. Especially because we're at Davos, where I think a lot of these ideas are being thrown around. So the reality of that and how it works.
Absolutely. Do you want to take the first one and the second one maybe.
Sure. I think the humanitarian reset is precisely it fits precisely within the model of what we're trying to do here. Remember that we've now got 15 UN agencies on board with this, this digital treasury hub. And so that is at the heart of the humanitarian reset is to be able to share platforms, share expertise, make sure that we just don't have a whole system that's doubling up on itself. And I think this has been something that sure sprouted within UNHCR, but it's not something that we wanted to keep selfishly to ourselves. It's something that we we saw the scalable factor of. And with circle's help, we really have been able to do that. We've we're at 15, but I think it can keep growing.
Yeah. And I think I'll ladder off of that. And also, attempt to answer your second question. The this was purpose built for the era that we're in right now because you need we need to organizations like the UN already had to squeeze as much out of every dollar, because their whole goal is to get as much into the hands of the people who need it most. Now that's that's more, more important than ever. And so, embracing technology like this enables them to do that and enables their employees as well to, to focus on different things, that they can continue helping those communities in a more robust way than maybe they could have because of technology limitations. I mean, the real, the real sort of killer concept here is, modern humanitarian finance needs, modern infrastructure. And so, that's a nice segue into your other question, which is that I have been honestly overwhelmed with how much these organizations have not only inspired us to do a better job ourselves, but also just inspired. They're just they're just inspiring in terms of their tenacity to figure out how to make this work. Scarcity does breed innovation, opportunity, etc. and their doggedness to, to push this pilot through because it's a weird concept in 2022 for, for, you know, a UN organization to say, I'm going to take something called a stablecoin. Most people in the organization probably wondered what the heck that was, and can I trust it? And how does that work? And these are storied institutions and they're they're they care because the people on the the beneficiaries will suffer if they don't get it right. So the doggedness with which they have, just dove in to learn and vet a lot of vetting to make sure that this will work and that we can build this in a way that actually helps the end user, the beneficiary, the immigrant, the families, the humans at the other end has been incredibly impressive today. I would say I don't think there's any organization in the UN that isn't thinking about how to embrace technology, such as a digital dollar stablecoin or anything else that that we're building with this internet financial system that we're building, because they recognize the benefits of it. And I've been equally impressed with how they have really all of them are including many, many, many nonprofits around the world, of varying sizes and shapes are leaning in right now to rethink what's possible.
There we go. You've had your questions. You've had your answers. Thank you very much, Elizabeth. Thank you, David, thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Sorry. Thanks, everybody.
Thank you.
Could someone get a picture?