Visa, a US-based payments company, and Oxfam America, an anti-poverty NGO, announced during the recent COP28 meetings in the UAE that they plan to scale Oxfam’s Building Resilient, Adaptive and Disaster-ready Communities (B-READY) project to deliver relief payments in advance of storms and flooding in Colombia, Kenya and the US territory of Puerto Rico. B-READY was launched in 2019 in the Philippines and has since been replicated in Indonesia and Sudan. The system uses “predictive modeling” to anticipate humanitarian assistance needs and deliver mobile money payments to households and businesses before storms and floods occur so recipients can prepare for the impacts and respond more quickly to them.
Oxfam America is an affiliate of Oxfam International, which was established in 1995 as a confederation of 14 organizations working to reduce poverty. Oxfam’s name is derived from its founding member, the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, which began operating in Britain in 1942 advocating for food supplies to be sent to non-combatants in Greece during the Second World War. Since then, Oxfam has grown to serve 99 countries with disaster relief, advocacy and policy research with the aim of finding long-term solutions for poverty eradication.
Visa partners with financial institutions to provide consumers with credit, debit and prepaid cards that can be used at merchants in 200 countries. The firm also offers payment and consulting services for commercial clients. As of September 2022, Visa reported 12-month net revenue of USD 29 billion on total assets of USD 85 billion.
By Rohan Kumar Agarwal, Research Associate
Sources and Additional Resources
Business Wire press release
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231204088757/en/Visa-and-Oxfam-America-to-Explore-Expanding-Anticipatory-Action-Program-to-Bring-Pre-Disaster-Financial-Support-to-the-Philippines-Kenya-Colombia-and-Puerto-Rico
Oxfam International homepage
https://www.oxfam.org
Visa homepage
https://visa.com
Did you know that MicroCapital publishes the MicroCapital Monitor newspaper each month? Download a sample at https://www.microcapital.org/products-page/
B-READY project homepage
https://b-ready.org/.
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