Mautinoa Technologies | Enabling finance as humanitarian aid

THE PROBLEM

Cash as Aid poses its own set of problems in many situations. As cash is not traceable, it is impossible to prevent the funding of weapons, terrorism in unstable areas, and petty corruption elsewhere. It is also vulnerable when transported in bulk and often difficult to move in bulk, especially where a mixture of high and low value bills is required. Following significant disruption there are inevitable liquidity problems, and this limits the utility of cash in crisis.

NOW

Following the World Humanitarian summit in 2015, it has been recognised that the conventional aid system is increasingly overstretched. Leading NGOs have pushed for Cash to be recognised as the dominant aid modality, but until concerns about diversion, corruption, safety, security and terrorist financing can be met, this is remains difficult in the areas where it is most needed. We think we can overcome these problems with a combination of technology and ingenuity to make Cash as the dominant form of aid a reality.

HOW

Following our founders’ experiences in humanitarian operations during the Ebola epidemic in 2014-15 in West Africa, along with recent improvements to smartphone standards and a rapid fall in costs, we concluded that it is possible to build a platform to allow people in humanitarian need to access cash funds. Funds can be transferred from individuals or organizations via mobile app.

Mautinoa Technologies aims to provide a complete platform for the delivery of finance as aid to communities and individuals in the developing world. We aim to launch our first platform services in 2017.

Mautinoa

Mautinoa Technologies is designed as a long term sustainable business. We anticipate our platform services having to deal with significant amounts of money flowing into and out of the system in a variety of different currencies. This allows us to charge management fees at low rates, as well as leveraging cash flows via treasury management to generate income. We aim to net fees from partner money transmission networks and local financial institutions as they are given integration access to the platform. We will not charge the beneficiaries or the merchants fees, but aim to recover value further up the value chain and horizontally via money flows. The total budget for global humanitarian emergency aid was 25 billion dollars in 2015 and is only set to get larger. At the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, major agencies and donor countries pledged to deliver 50% of aid as cash within the next 5 to 10 years, so we are well placed to help.

By 2017, Mautinoa Technologies aims to provide a complete platform for the delivery of finance as aid to communities and individuals in the developing world.

"Working with NGO and government partners, Mautinoa will revolutionise humanitarian aid. We’re moving humanitarian aid from paternalistic giving of goods and services to an enabling model allowing survivors to restart their lives and local economies to recover faster, without the long-term economic damage that often comes with external intervention. Our innovative service platform allows beneficiaries to communicate, transact, and organise while simultaneously allowing regulators, NGOs, agencies, and donors at all levels to monitor the efficacy of programmes."

- Emerson Tan, CEO of Mautinoa Technologies.