Mercy Corps, a global humanitarian organization, has established a $1 million Crypto for Good Fund to test and support blockchain-based solutions for people who are low-income and/or unbanked.

“We are excited to partner with visionary founding teams to identify, test, and prove the potential of crypto and web3 to improve financial access for the world’s 1.7 billion unbanked,” says Scott Onder, Mercy Corps Ventures’ senior managing director. “Our goal is to validate use-cases and accelerate the development of solutions that benefit users in emerging markets.”

Benefits

The Fund will provide ten eligible startups with an equity-free grant of between $25,000 and $100,000 to run their pilot for six months in 2022.

Mercy Corps Ventures will provide mentorship, impact measurement advisory, access to partnership opportunities, knowledge exchange, and visibility through their communications channels in addition to capital.

Eligibility

Pilot projects in frontier and emerging economies should use decentralized finance and blockchain technology to improve access to financial services and other livelihood improvements for low-income communities.

• Applicants must be early-stage startups leveraging blockchain to deliver financial inclusion solutions to low-income and/or un/underbanked users
• Applicants must have active users and commercial revenue
• Applicants must be an entity registered and operating in the country of the pilot. Pilots can operate in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Pacific Islands, Eastern Europe or Western Balkans

Mercy Corps Ventures is particularly interested in assisting entrepreneurs in their local market, as well as female founders and applicants with representation of women at all levels of the organization and/or solutions that reach a large female user base.

Coins/Tokens, NFTs, Digital wallets, Lending protocols, Digital ID, DAOs, Smart contracts, and other solutions are examples of solutions.

How to Apply

Apply to be a part of the Mercy Corps Venture Fund here. The application deadline is April 15, 2022.