At the 11th Philippine Forum hosted by The Asset panellists discussed the impact of technology had in assisting victims of Super Typhoon Yolanda in 2013.

“Typhoon Yolanda was a case study for many humanitarian organizations in the scale that it effected different communities,” explains Maria Theresa Nina Espinola-Abogado, project manager, electronic prepaid solution at Oxfam. “We were thinking of ways of how we could speed up the distribution.”

The end result for Oxfam was partnering up with Unionbank and Visa in putting in place a electronic cash transfer program that leveraged on the use of prepaid card credited with a fixed amount of money. “There were cases of theft and robbery when people would go outside of the distribution site. Some of the money that they worked hard for was stolen from them,” shares Espinola-Abogado.

In addition to securing the distribution process, the prepaid card solution also greatly reduced the cost of handling public donations as funds were instantly credited into the system. “Our objective is to include inclusive growth because of the low cost of doing electronic payments then doing in cash,” states Jove Tapiador, monitoring & evaluation specialist at USAID E-PESO Activity. “Oxfam’s prepaid card solution simply demonstrates that the case for electronic payments works in real life especially in the Philippines. In other countries we have tremendous growth rates of financial inclusion.”