WFP Building Blocks — Iris-Scan Blockchain Cash Assistance for Refugees in Jordan

Syrian refugees resettled in Jordan's Azraq camp lacked bank accounts, smartphones or physical ID cards, making conventional cash-assistance payment methods difficult to deliver securely at scale.

Enable refugees without a bank account, smartphone or ID card to receive and spend cash assistance securely, while cutting the transaction fees WFP pays to banks.

Piloted from May 2017, the World Food Programme's Building Blocks links each family's cash-assistance entitlement to a blockchain ledger and authenticates purchases with an iris scan at the till, letting refugees pay for food using only their eyes as credential. The system scaled from Azraq to Zaatari and King Abdullah Park camps by 2018, and by 2025 covered crisis-affected populations across Jordan, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Pakistan and Ukraine.

Within its first months the pilot moved over $1.4 million in food vouchers to roughly 10,500 refugees; by 2018 it had disbursed $37 million and cut WFP's bank transaction fees by 98%. By 2025 the platform had transferred more than $760 million across over 40 million redemption transactions to around six million people, with an estimated $3.5 million saved in bank fees by 2023 and over one million refugees in Jordan and Bangladesh using it actively every month.

Independent researcher Zara Rahman (The Engine Room) has warned that bulk biometric collection carries serious risk if control of the data shifts, citing historical misuse of population registries against displaced people. MIT Technology Review also noted that as of 2018 the iris-scan system worked at only two officially sanctioned stores, leaving informal vendors unintegrated -- a reminder that biometric convenience alone does not guarantee full financial inclusion.