Caracas/Venezuela, March 2019: Families gathered up plastic bottles to fill them with hosepipes
The financial sector in Venezuela never escaped the crisis and operates in an extremely high-risk credit environment in the midst of hyperinflation and economic collapse. Not surprisingly, this has led to major operational obstacles for banks, as offering even the most basic financial services has become a challenge. The scarcity of resources and talent, high service costs, high tariffs and commissions to cover them, and the increasing difficulty to maintain relations with international banks are only some of the difficulties banks face.
Given this negative financial context inside Venezuela, Airtm and iMMAP decided to work together to bring efficient and agile financial solutions for NGOs operating inside the country allowing them to send and receive funds across borders. This will ensure a steady flow of money to these NGOs avoiding financial barriers in their operations.
Through this innovative partnership, both organizations will collaborate by designing diverse payment transfer tools that facilitate international payments to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) inside of Venezuela from overseas. iMMAP will contribute its expertise in information management to those organizations that in turn, will use AirTM as a provider of financial services through its web and app products. Ultimately, this will allow NGOs to transfer money between international and domestic accounts more smoothly, enabling humanitarian operations within Venezuela to run more effectively.
About AirTMAirTM is a FinCEN-registered Money Service Business with web and smartphone applications that enable individuals and businesses to exchange various forms of value through a U.S.dollar-denominated digital token which can be sent and spent as required by the customer.
About iMMAPiMMAP is an international NGO that provides information management services to humanitarian and development organizations, enabling partners to make informed decisions that ultimately provide high-quality targeted assistance to the world’s most vulnerable populations. iMMAP provides support to humanitarian actors to solve operational and strategic challenges. This approach by iMMAP facilitates informed and effective emergency preparedness, humanitarian response, and development aid activities by enabling evidence-based decision-making for UN agencies, humanitarian cluster/sector leads, NGOs, and government operations.