Mercy Corps Ventures and Polygon Partner to Advance Blockchain Solutions in Emerging Markets Like Africa

Mercy Corps Ventures (MCV), the impact investing arm of the global development organization, Mercy Corps, has announced a partnership with Polygon Labs, a leading player in the blockchain space.

The partnership aims to accelerate blockchain solutions for under-served and low-income individuals and communities in emerging markets.

Mercy Corps Ventures invests in and catalyzes venture-led solutions to help under-served groups join the global economy. Since its founding in 2015, MCV has supported 41 early-stage ventures in scaling and raising over $333.9 million in follow-on capital, the organization says.

Additionally, the MCV portfolio is 51% female-founded and centers around resilience-building solutions in adaptive agriculture and food systems, frontier fintech, and climate smart systems.

The partnership with Polygon Labs will focus on three key pillars:

• Funding blockchain pilots that will enable access to the financial system for traditionally excluded and under-served communities
• A series of blockchain hackathons with developers serving emerging market users to increase education and awareness about how blockchain can help solve local challenges in the impact space
• Running a blockchain bootcamp roadshow in markets where Mercy Corps has a presence aimed to provide educational and informational sessions for local educational institutions, NGOs, and other organizations looking to improve operations through blockchain technology

The partnership also comes at a time when the hype of blockchain and Web3 solutions for under-banked populations has not yet been matched by the reality in emerging markets. While some real-world use cases exist, most lack the measurable outcomes to build a business and impact case for these technologies.

MCV has been actively piloting Web3 solutions to responsibly test, de-risk, and build the evidence base for promising, cutting-edge innovation. These solutions leverage Web3 to explore nascent areas of their thesis, building resilience for under-served individuals and communities.

The Crypto for Good Fund II, launched by MCV in February 2023, is expected to drive global financial inclusion and climate resilience through a series of pilots, building an evidence base to prove the scalability of blockchain-enabled solutions in making a positive impact in emerging markets.

“We know that startups are bringing new, innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges,” says Scott Onder, Managing Director of Mercy Corps Ventures.

“We want to support founders to scale these nascent solutions by offering strategic support and funding to test, validate and accelerate their work to onboard the next generation of users in emerging markets.”

The Polygon network is home to tens of thousands of decentralized applications, including some of the most prominent DeFi players such as Aave, QuickSwap, OpenSea, and Uniswap V3.