The Payment Instrument Tracking application is an innovative solution that digitally tracks payment cards, optimizing the end-to-end distribution process, halving the average distribution time with significant resource savings, eliminating errors and enhancing data assurance.
Cash is one of the most effective ways for the WFP to help families fight hunger, malnutrition and improve their food security. Where markets and financial sectors are functioning, putting money directly into people’s hands, particularly women, helps people buy what they need and may be a starting point for digital financial inclusion. In 2022, WFP transferred 3.3 billion USD to beneficiaries, of which almost 50 per cent was done through bank cards, SIM cards and WFP SCOPECARDS. The tracking of payment cards and verification of people’s identity is an important process for WFP to ensure transfers are arriving to the intended people.
WFP operations often rely on manual processes to perform card distributions and verify people's identities. This results in the use of paper forms and Excel spreadsheets which pose two key problems for field operations: Operational inefficiencies during payment card distribution causing long waiting lines for beneficiaries and Cash assurance gaps caused by manual process data entry errors, operational delays and possible divergence of digital money.
Driven by core operational challenges on the ground, Payment Instrument Tracking replaces manual card distributions and identity verifications, enabling WFP to provide a better experience to the people we serve through simple and secure card distributions.
The application operates on Android devices that can be adapted to different contextual needs with a user-friendly web application that allows the detailed tracking of payment cards and easy generation of reports.
The two-part system has a mobile application component that operates on Android devices and can be adapted to different contextual needs for beneficiary verification at payment card distribution points. A user-friendly web application allows for detailed tracking of payment cards and easy generation of reports.
Having successfully scaled to 15 country operations, Payment Instrument Tracking is working to optimize the architecture to accommodate more data points allowing it to realize its target of scaling to 40 country operations globally, reaching 21 million people by 2024.
