# 0xj4an - Stablecoins for the People: On-Chain Subsidies and Frictionless Web3 Onboarding in Colombia

- Channel: [ETHCluj Meetup](https://streameth.org/ethcluj-meetup)
- Date: 2026-07-09
- Duration: 16:34
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-IBRptAFsSLI
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBRptAFsSLI

## Description

ReFi Colombia built a stablecoin-powered subsidy platform on Celo that delivers real value to communities while onboarding people into Web3 without friction. This talk covers how we did it, the impact so far, and why this model is replicable anywhere

## Transcript

This presentation is going to be very simple. I just want I just want to show how we are using a stable coins in Colombia for on boarding people into web three. But they didn't know they are using crypto. So they are just using like a Benmo app or Revolute app or whatever and they are getting into crypto but they are not knowing that they are into crypto. So when you get like a lot of people in that way at the end you can start telling them like okay this is crypto if you want to learn more and you want to advance more you can do like some kind of move to a more complex wallet or stuff like that but it's just to remove like a like a barrier for people have mental barriers and when you tell somebody like hey do you want to get into crypto they I don't I don't understand that. I don't know how it works. It's too complicated. So, this is how we are doing things. We are using an excuse like giving out money for people, but it's not for everyone. It's for people that actually needs the money. So, we are giving out like some subsidies for people. So, people is being able to claim kind of $3 a week. So it's kind of $20 a month that is nothing. It's just to help them but they they are getting the subsidy they they keep the the money they got from the subsidi and after like after I don't know three months six months savings they they offramp the money they make like a beard eye party for the for the for the kid or they just went into occasions or whatever or they need the funds because a medical emergency or something. So we are helping people in that way but also they are learning how to use crypto and they didn't know that. So it's kind of how we can attract pe people to crypto easily. So uh just it's like how we can how we can attract people in Colombia. I don't know if you have heard about refi community. Refi is like a you know inside inside crypto you have like the defi stuff you have some technical things and refi is more like environmental things social social things. So refi is kind of how we can use the crypto for for for good for money for the people. So in Colombia we have like around the globe we have a a movement that is ri and we launched like three years four years ago one initial local chapter they launched like local chapters in Mexico in Medin in Africa like a lot of places around the world and we launched one in Marin and the chapter of me have been doing like outstanding work beside the other chapter. So we are we were always like okay they are doing good good things they are doing like good activities and we were doing activities like planting plant h planting trees uh collecting garbage kind of that that activities um so with that for that activities people come and volunteer and they they do things for environment and they get nothing. So we decided we decid decided to like okay we are going to build a subsci platform where people will be able to claim funds every week. But for that if you want to if you want to be part of the platform you also need to contribute you you need to come to the activities you need to take part of of the activities. So one one criteria for people to be able to be included in the subsi is they need they need to take part of the activities that we we did. We did a pilot in me and after that we decided to just scale the pilot and do it for the for the whole Colombia refi community. So in Colombia we have like five local nodes. We have one in Majin, one running in Kartahena, one running in Boota, another one running in Amazonas. Every local chapter is like a local community and is managed by like local teams. So for example, I I belong to RIN and I do some activities in me and coordinate that that activities in me and other persons are coordinating refunda refas. other persons are doing activities in Bgotaa, others in Kartahena etc. and together we we create the Rifi Colombia like an umbrella for for all the local communities. So this is a just a traditional subsc we're just like relaying in the local community. So local communities, local chapters say like can you please include this beneficiary into the W list and we have a W list and we include beneficiaries into into the W list and they they started to be able to claim subsidies. Uh but this is the important part part how the subsidy work. As I told you, like people can claim subsidies every every week. But we built a wallet for Colombia because the Metamas wallet or any kind of web three wallets are so complicated. So when you open a wallet, you have a lot of coins and a lot of options and people don't understand anything. They got overwhelmed. So we build a specific wallet for Colombia that is very simple. you in the wallet you only have pesos and dollars. No, no more. You you don't have like any other token and behind the pesos and behind the dollars you you have the USDT or the COPM M that are tokens that lives on sale of blockchain. But we don't want to tell that history to to the people because they don't know what the is USDT or or COP M. They they don't understand anything. They just need to know that it's pesos is dollars. So I have a balance in pesos. I have a balance in dollars. They can swap between them. They they can invest. They can create fixed terms and stuff like that. This is a wallet built in Colombia. We don't build the wallet. Refer Colombia don't build the wallet. It's a it's an independent project. But we asked that wallet, okay, please help us to distribute the subsidies. So inside the wallet there is a a banner a banner I don't know where is the banner but I can show you later in in my phone I have the wallet people come to the initial initial screen and they will see some kind of card similar to these ones I think is it's down uh it says h claim your subsidy but everything is in Spanish. So people just click on claim your your subs and when when they click on claim your subs they are going to get into this this screen and this screen just verify a smart contract in the blockchain if they have claimed the subsidy in the past seven days or if they haven't claimed it. So they have not claimed the subsc. So they don't they don't know that is crypto. They don't they they just see pesos and dollars and they just go every week and click on claim subsidy. That's all. Uh how they of money? We we have an integration button there. You can clean click in of ramp and when you click on that on that of ramp button it's going to ask you how much do you want of ramp uh what is your bank account like you select the the local the local bank that you want to receive the money everyone use bank Colombia just put bank Colombia it's going to ask you for the bank account number and then you submit that transaction and when you submit that transaction you are going to you are going to see this this screen that is the transaction is going on and it's just waiting to be processed. It takes like five 10 minutes and you uh you will receive the money in your bank. So people is just getting like digital pesos. We call them digital pesos. Okay. You have digital pesos. You claim subsidies in digital pesos and you have run digital pesos to get get into the bank account. You have a question. >> Yeah. take out the money for act show like convert it into real money. Do you have to pay taxes for it in a little bit? >> Okay, let's take the the question for the end. I I I will I will finish and I will Okay, so how we communicate with beneficialist you should think like this is very easily nobody's going to ask any question like people ask questions like hey how can do this? Hey, what is is is real people using tools is is the reality like it's very simple app and people still have questions like the you ask UX part is very complicated you need to put it very simple so and people don't use telegram in Colombia they don't use e x x in Colombia is used for politics they just use Tik Tok Instagram and WhatsApp that's all because it's low income people is people that are not used to to have in touch technology. Look, one thing is like I have to add a new app. I don't have a space in my phone. That is the reality. So, we have a a WhatsApp group uh where we communicate with all of them and they they just send the screenshot. Hey, I already claim my subsi. I already claim my subsi and stuff like that. And we built a lot of tutorials like how to offramp look is like a step by step. You need to go step by step because otherwise people is going to ask question and you need to build trust with them because at the beginning when we made the the pilot imaging machine people is like okay I will claim that digital dollars and what a I'm going to do with them I cannot spend them like where so with the offram solution people okay I receive the money in my bank okay is is good so they trust us now and people is starting to trust like trusting in us. So the king side of all these things is just invisible on boarding like you are on boarding people into crypto just like they don't know what they are doing but they are just using the app and we have been doing this for I mean we did the pilot in like one year ago during the whole last year and this year we transition it to be more open for Colombia. So you can you can take a look here at the the graphic how the the distribution is going on like more um we have like 77 like almost 80 beneficiaries at the at the moment we have distributed like I think that is like 5k 5k dollars. uh we still have like in the in the balance of the contracts like 20k for distributing the the thing is okay if we go if we keep distributing the funds and stuff like that we are going to run out of funds because it's super so we need people to support to go and donate into into the contract. The good thing is why why we build this because it's like you can trust you can go and and check the contracts and you can see how the funds are distributed. So we are not taking any fee from anything. We are not charging anything. So if I manage to convince like an NGO to come and donate, they are going to be they they can be sure that the funds are are being distributed to the right to the people. So it's like a tool a tool for to distribute subsidies. So here we have like a a lot of a lot of message from from people saying like thank you. I I was able to pay my bills, my my services. I was able to to take my my my son to to celebrate the happy birthday. They were able to go to the beach and stuff like that. So I think that's is the the best part and it and the lesson is like we are we are building trust like people is trusting us because it was really hard at the beginning they trust what is this digital pesos thing. So they are trusting us and with that evidence and with all the work we have done I think we are we will be able to convince somebody to came and put some funds in the contract so we can keep continue like uh supporting people and the thing is we are supporting people but we are also bringing users to to the blockchains so to to the blockchain h all the thing is deployed on cell blockchain And yeah, that is that that was the presentation idea. If you want to like maybe donate, you can just go uh to the website and you can donate. If we can switch here, I can set show you uh you can come here and you can see all the statics on chain. Those those numbers are are real from the contracts. You can go and check the contracts also and you can donate here. You can just need to connect the the wallet and donate and the funds are going to go to to the smart contract and that was the only the old interface people at the beginning they needed to come open a website connect the wallet and claim the subc and that was not working. And that's why we decided to put the the subsca inside the inside the the wallet that I showed you before. So if you want to donate, donate. If you want to uh maybe you say like, okay, I want to do the same. You the GHO repo is public and we can use okay this this is the repo. This is the the contracts. Just fork it and do it yourself also in any community that you want to do it. Or or we can also like if you don't want to fork it and clone it, you maybe you can say like okay I'm going to put some funds there but let me add 10 beneficiaries and we can do that. I I mean we can do whatever. I just wanted to show what we are doing in Colombia and how we can learn from that experience.