The Spanish Red Cross launches a digital platform that preserves privacy and offers GREATER transparency to donors

Creu Roja implements Billions Network’s zero-knowledge technology to provide full traceability to donors, keeping beneficiary identities private.

As humanitarian organizations around the world face increasing accountability pressure, Creu Roja (Spanish Red Cross) has implemented a blockchain-based digital payments platform that offers full financial transparency to donors without compromising the privacy or dignity of vulnerable beneficiaries, replacing manual and paper-based processes.

The platform, developed in collaboration with Barcelona-based technology infrastructure company BLOOCK, digitizes the entire aid cycle—from donation to distribution—to create an immutable audit trail, while ensuring that no personal data ever reaches the public blockchain. Unlike some blockchain-based initiatives that rely on biometric identifiers or invasive data collection, Creu Roja’s platform design allows results to be verified without recording who receives help.

«People seeking assistance should not have to choose between receiving help and protecting their privacy. We designed this system so that donors can verify that their contributions really made an impact, and so that beneficiaries access support without fear of being tracked, profiled or stigmatized,» said Francisco López, Project Lead at Creu Roja Catalunya.

The implementation comes against a backdrop of increasing scrutiny over the delivery of international aid, as affected communities increasingly identify corruption, favoritism and a lack of transparency as obstacles to effective assistance. Blockchain-based solutions have emerged as a possible answer, but many implementations require beneficiaries to give up sensitive personal data, including biometric data, raising concerns among privacy advocates. Even well-intentioned projects can expose vulnerable populations to risks of surveillance, profiling, and discrimination. In the case of Creu Roja, the blockchain is used exclusively as a verification layer, anchoring cryptographic proof of transactions without storing identifiable information.

The platform replaces paper-based workflows and traditional prepaid cards with a digital system that clearly separates information donors need to know from information they don’t. Beneficiaries receive digital aid credits deposited in a personal mobile wallet, without the need for a bank account or credit history, preserving dignity and reducing barriers to access. These credits can be used at authorized local businesses using QR codes, in transactions indistinguishable from any regular purchase. There are no “aid cards” or other instruments that publicly identify a person as a beneficiary.

Donors and administrators have real-time visibility into aggregate aid flows, including amounts allocated, funds used, and resource destination. An immutable audit trail, anchored on a public blockchain, provides cryptographic proof that each euro was intended for authorized purposes, without granting access to the individual identities of the beneficiaries.

«The architecture follows a principle that we apply in all our business deployments: the blockchain must certify the truth, not store content. Each transaction generates a cryptographic proof that is permanently anchored and independently verifiable, but said proof does not contain personal information,» said Lluís Llibre, CEO of BLOOCK.

To date, the BLOOCK platform has processed over 952,000 crypto transactions and over 257,000 data validations. The project was recognized with the Talent Chamber Award in the Innovation category in 2020, awarded jointly by the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce and Welcome Talent Society.

Architecturally, RedChain implements a hybrid trust model, in which beneficiary information—such as names, contact details, and case records—remains completely off-chain in systems controlled by Creu Roja. Aid credits exist as ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum smart contracts, representing allocated funds without identifying their holders. When transactions are made, only hashes, timestamps, and integrity anchors are recorded on the public blockchain, while actual spending records remain in off-chain databases with corresponding verification hashes. The entire audit trail can be reconstructed from on-chain evidence without exposing personal data.

The technology stack includes Ethereum for anchoring on the public blockchain, smart contracts on Solidity for issuing ERC-20 credits, a Go backend with REST API, Angular for administrative and merchant web interfaces, Ionic for the mobile wallet, and role-based access control with system-wide digital signatures. This architecture ensures that even if external systems are compromised, the blockchain does not contain exploitable personal information.

«What Creu Roja built here is a credential system, not a surveillance system. Beneficiaries keep proof of their eligibility in their own wallet. They present it when necessary, reveal nothing else, and move on with their lives. This is how identity should work, especially in humanitarian and public interest systems. Each person owns their credentials, decides what to share, and no one builds a profile without their consent,» said Evin McMullen, CEO and co-founder of Billions Network.

BLOOCK’s approach demonstrates how humanitarian organizations can combine accountability, privacy and digital efficiency without introducing new risks to the people they serve.