Digital Identity & Payments for Distributed Ledger Technology

Aligned Missions, Global Impact

In a fast-evolving digital world, trust and efficiency in payments and identity are more important than ever. At AID:Tech, this need drives our mission to merge digital identity with programmable payments, empowering individuals, NGOs, and governments to distribute resources efficiently, transparently, and inclusively. In partnership with Hedera and the Hedera Foundation, we’re ushering in a new era of programmable disbursements and verified identities, unlocking opportunity at scale.

Why Hedera? A Foundation Built for Trust and Efficiency

AID:Tech’s decision to build with Hedera was both technical and philosophical. Hedera’s unique hashgraph technology delivers the combination of speed, reliability, and predictably low transaction fees that real-world disbursement programs rely on. Every cent counts in humanitarian work; the savings and operational certainty Hedera offers mean more resources reach those who need them most.

Transparency: Hedera’s public ledger creates tamper-proof, auditable records of every transaction, boosting trust for donors, recipients, and regulatory bodies alike.

Reliability: Consistent uptime and transaction finality ensure that aid, insurance, or programmatic disbursements aren’t held up by congestion or outages. Hedera processes up to 10,000 transactions per second with finality in seconds.

Sustainability: Carbon negative and deeply committed to ESG principles, Hedera aligns with AID:Tech’s vision for technology in service of people and planet. The network consumes less energy than a Visa transaction and has achieved carbon-negative status.

Enterprise Support: With a governing council of 33 global industry leaders, including Google, IBM, Boeing, and Deutsche Telekom, Hedera is built for scale and institutional trust.

HBAR Utility: The HBAR token powers transactions with rapid settlement, low fees averaging $0.001, staking possibilities with up to 2.5% annual rewards, and growing liquidity across global exchanges.

The AID:Tech Platform: Infrastructure for Next-Gen Disbursements

Our platform leverages Hedera’s core features to deliver:

Programmable Payouts: Bulk payments for welfare, grants, and insurance with built-in logic, restrictions, or triggers, deployable across borders and currencies.

Digital Identity Management: Recipients onboarded via robust KYC/AML checks with verifiable credentials, reducing fraud and ensuring compliance.

Auditable Disbursements: Every fund flow can be traced and independently verified, boosting transparency and accountability for all stakeholders.

This infrastructure is live and in use, notably in the Philippines, where AID:Tech builds on prior work with Microsoft and Save the Children to deliver digital IDs and critical payments to vulnerable populations.

Hedera’s Track Record: Enterprise-Ready and Future-Focused

Hedera has built a reputation as one of the top distributed ledger networks globally:

History: Founded in 2018 by Leemon Baird and Mance Harmon, Hedera launched with a vision for sustainable, high-speed, enterprise-grade blockchain infrastructure. Governance transitioned to the Hedera Council (formerly Hedera Governing Council), now comprising 33 leading organizations.

2025 Rebranding: In May 2025, Hedera announced a strategic rebrand: the HBAR Foundation became Hedera Foundation, and the Hedera Governing Council became Hedera Council. This unified brand identity brought greater clarity to the ecosystem. Charles Adkins, formerly President of Hedera, was appointed CEO of Hedera Foundation effective January 1, 2025, with a sharpened focus on DeFi, AI, tokenization, and digital identity.

Major Wins: Hedera’s 2025 achievements include:

In late October 2025, Hedera, the Hedera Foundation, and Canary Capital made headlines across the digital asset and institutional investment world by announcing the launch of the first HBAR ETF. This marks a watershed moment, bringing Hedera’s core token, HBAR, to mainstream investors through a regulated exchange-traded fund (ETF) structure. Analysts expect this move to drive institutional liquidity and create new bridges between blockchain-powered programmable finance and traditional asset management.

The partnership with Canary Capital, a respected name in digital finance, signals increasing confidence from the industry’s leading players. Backed by Hedera’s enterprise-grade infrastructure, efficient energy use, and strong governance, the HBAR ETF provides exposure to one of the fastest-growing blockchain ecosystems. This aligns with Hedera’s ambitions to scale use cases in payments, digital identity, and tokenization, unlocking real-world utility for the next generation of investors and end-users.

• Selected for the Bank of England’s DLT Innovation Challenge in October 2025, testing how to securely transact and settle central bank money on external ledgers.

• Chosen as the only new blockchain for Wyoming’s FRNT stablecoin in September 2025, with interest income flowing into Wyoming’s education fund.

• Partnerships with NVIDIA and Intel were announced in late 2024 and continuing through 2025, focusing on AI infrastructure and verifiable compute.

Ecosystem Growth: The Hedera Foundation fosters DeFi innovation, stablecoin integration, and ecosystem growth across multiple sectors, including payments, supply chain, and digital ID. The foundation launched the Hello Future Trilogy hackathon series with $550,000 in total prizes and the Thrive 2025 grants program, rewarding milestone-based progress in real-world metrics like user adoption and mainnet deployment.

Technical Milestones: Hedera donated its entire codebase to the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust as Project Hiero in 2024, marking the first time a public chain donated its code to an independent foundation. The network continues advancing with features like batch transactions, enhanced smart contract capabilities, and improved tokenization tools.

ESG Impact: The Guardian platform and sustainability pilots make Hedera a top pick for projects with climate, energy, and social good at their core. Hedera’s carbon-negative status and focus on ESG and sustainability position it as a leader in environmentally responsible blockchain solutions.

The Philippines: Scaling Social Impact with Hedera

Our current partnership with Hedera in the Philippines continues and expands pioneering work started in 2021, when AID:Tech, Microsoft, and Save the Children enabled thousands of displaced people in Marawi City to receive digital IDs and rapid financial aid following a 2017 armed conflict. Over 3,000 individuals received assistance through blockchain-powered digital identification running on Microsoft Azure.

Today, with Hedera, we’re bringing even greater transparency, auditability, and inclusivity:

Disaster Relief: Disbursements can be conditioned and tracked, reducing fraud and ensuring funds reach the right hands quickly.

Welfare & Social Programs: Program administrators can embed rules such as spending categories, location gating, and time windows directly in payouts, all while maintaining privacy and compliance.

Future Vision: As the Hedera ecosystem matures, we see even more potential for digital identity, programmable payouts, and DeFi-powered social impact to transform lives. AID:Tech is exploring parametric insurance and a climate data API that will collect and analyze climate-related information to identify areas vulnerable to climate instability.

Hedera & AID:Tech: Shared DNA, Shared Destiny

Why do our missions align so strongly?

Digital Identity at the Core: Both AID:Tech and Hedera recognize that digital ID is fundamental to financial inclusion, government services, and next-gen DeFi. As Niall Dennehy, Co-Founder and COO of AID:Tech, stated, “Our goal is to provide underbanked populations around the world with secure access to financial services that were previously unavailable or difficult to obtain.”

Payments & DeFi: HBAR enables stable, borderless, programmable transactions. Hedera’s infrastructure future-proofs AID:Tech’s solutions for DeFi, cross-currency applications, and more.

ESG & Social Good: Hedera’s carbon neutrality and open approach to sustainability perfectly match our ethos as a company building for real-world impact. The network’s commitment to environmental, social, and governance principles resonated strongly with AID:Tech’s leadership team.

Ecosystem Support: The Hedera Foundation isn’t just a funder; they’re a strategic partner facilitating growth, compliance, and integration at every step. As Sabrina Tachdjian, Head of Fintech & Payments at the Hedera Foundation (formerly HBAR Foundation), noted, “In a mobile-first world, AID:Tech’s Hedera-powered wallet offers a modern and scalable solution to the age-old financial inclusion problem.”

Industry Endorsements & Expanding Opportunity

Media Recognition: Industry publications highlight AID:Tech and Hedera’s role in merging digital ID and payments, especially in developing markets.

Community & Social Channels: Community leaders and partners have spotlighted this collaboration through LinkedIn announcements and social media updates from milestone launches to thought leadership on the future of humanitarian payments.

The Road Ahead: New pilots, expanded APIs, and deeper DeFi integrations are all in the works for the Philippines and beyond. AID:Tech is also developing the ATTH token (AID:Tech Token on Hedera) to incentivize data contribution and aid transactions within the ecosystem.

Conclusion: Building Tomorrow, Together

The era of programmable, inclusive, and transparent payments and digital identity is here, and AID:Tech and Hedera are at its forefront. With a foundation of reliability, scale, and real-world trust, we’re not just talking about social impact; we’re building it. For agencies, NGOs, enterprises, and individuals ready to embrace the future of payments and identity, the journey starts now.

With Hedera’s participation in the Bank of England’s DLT Innovation Challenge, selection for Wyoming’s state-backed stablecoin, and growing institutional recognition through multiple ETF applications, the Hedera network is proving its enterprise readiness. AID:Tech is proud to build on this trusted infrastructure to deliver the next generation of digital identity and programmable payments to those who need it most.