Cash transfers at scale: risks, data and social protection

1Monitoring markets and adjusting values

A cash programme lives with markets. Price monitoring (at least monthly, often joint within the cash working group) makes it possible to recalculate the MEB and adjust transfer values according to a mechanism agreed in advance: trigger threshold (for instance +15% on the basket), review frequency, harmonisation between organisations to avoid gaps between neighbours.

Post-distribution monitoring (PDM) measures how transfers are used, access to markets, risks encountered and effects (food consumption, coping strategies, debt).

2Risks: fraud, security, data

Risks are managed through a cash-specific risk register: diversion by intermediaries, ghost recipients, collusion with the provider, insecurity at pay points, exposure of personal data.

• Controls: payment reconciliation, random verification, an independent complaints line, contract clauses with the provider.
• Data: data protection impact assessment, minimisation, written data-sharing agreements, encryption and limited retention. Displacement status, ethnicity or religion are sensitive data.

3Towards social protection

In protracted or recurrent crises, humanitarian cash can build on national social protection systems or prepare a transition: using social registries, aligning values and criteria, supporting shock-responsive mechanisms (vertical or horizontal expansion of existing programmes).

This link must preserve humanitarian principles: where the State is a party to the conflict or certain populations are excluded, humanitarian aid keeps its independence.