Service: Kickstarting the Financial Lives of Refugees

Responsible organisation: The Finnish Immigration Service (Central-Government)

For two years the Finnish Immigration Service has been giving asylum seekers who don’t have bank accounts prepaid Mastercards instead of the traditional cash disbursements, and today the program has several thousand active cardholders. Developed by the Helsinki-based startup MONI, the card is also linked to a unique digital identity stored on a blockchain. This technology helps unbanked asylum seekers advance because what is typically keeping them from getting bank accounts and jobs is that they are missing a form of strongly authenticated identity. MONI’s technology uses one of a number of public blockchains as the means of transferring value—but in a way that to the users seems like using a debit card. A cardholder can pay for things at Mastercard terminals, or enter a number into a Web form to make payments online. MONI takes care of the cryptographic handshake necessary to execute the digital currency transaction as well as the conversion from digital currency back to fiat currency.

Additional information

Source Open Innovation Regione Lombardia
Web site https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/09/05/149330/how-blockchain-is-kickstarting-the-financial-lives-of-refugees/
Start/end date 2017 -
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