Stellar CEO Denelle Dixon will be part of a new four-person panel on the private sector’s role in addressing cross-border payment issues at the International Money Fund (IMF)’s annual meeting on Monday (Oct. 19).
Jonathan Dharmapalan, CEO of eCurrency; Rory MacFarquhar, senior vice president at Mastercard; and Rene Reinsberg, CEO of Celo will also participate in the panel, according to CoinDesk. The panel will be webcast and will begin at 9 a.m. ET on Monday.
Prior to that, another panel for policymakers including U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will discuss that topic as well.
After those panels, another will follow on the public sector’s role in cross-border payments, CoinDesk writes.
The final panel will be centered around co-chairs of a task force set up to propose a concrete way to improve cross-border payments.
Meanwhile, Ripple donated £7.73 million to humanitarian aid organization Mercy Corps, intending to bolster the non-governmental organization’s efforts to help create economic opportunities for those in areas with flawed financial systems, according to Invezz.
According to an announcement from Ripple, Mercy Corps has been able to help over 220 million people survive a variety of humanitarian conflicts. And through work with RippleWorks, the nonprofit arm of the cryptocurrency, Mercy Corps will work to implement new digital technology like distributed ledgers and cryptocurrency over a three-year project.
Ripple said it’s already working with Mercy Corps Ventures on identifying pilot projects and investing in startups in Latin America and Global South regions.
And Ripple will also seek to support education of Mercy Corps’ field staff, who will use digital financial solutions to fix the financial issues faced by people in those regions, with Mercy Corps intending to help around 10 million people with their financial challenges over the next decade.
Scott Onder, senior managing director for Mercy Corps Ventures, said the initiative would help to fix a broken system.
“The existing financial system is fragmented, antiquated, and exclusionary — leaving 1.7B people unbanked and disproportionately excluding women,” he said, according to the report. “Emerging FinTech, crypto and blockchain technologies have the potential to radically transform it, but there are substantial risks for the world’s most vulnerable people if their needs are not taken into consideration as these new technologies are designed and deployed.”
