InComm and SKUx Partner on Digital Payment Solutions

Atlanta-based InComm Payments, a payments technology giant founded in 1992, operates a massive global network with over 525,000 retail and online distribution points in more than 40 countries, reporting estimated annual revenues of over $880 million. The company processes transactions across diverse sectors, including healthcare, retail, and financial services, through a single integration point. St. Petersburg-based SKUx, founded in 2018, is a fintech startup that has raised $26.4 million in funding. Its core technology, SKUPay, enables serialized, item-level payments restricted to specific Universal Product Codes (UPC), ensuring funds are spent only on eligible products. This system is built on the Hedera Hashgraph distributed ledger for secure and traceable transactions. The partnership targets persistent challenges in humanitarian aid distribution, such as high transaction costs, which can be up to 5%, and ensuring funds are used for intended purposes. Traditional aid distribution can also suffer from delays and a lack of transparency, problems that digital solutions aim to solve. Research in some digital aid programs has shown refugees paying 16% to 30% more than cash payers due to limited vendor competition, a market inefficiency this type of item-level control could address. This collaboration is not the first application of distributed ledger technology in the humanitarian sector. The World Food Programme's "Building Blocks" platform has already used blockchain to handle over $555 million in transactions for millions of beneficiaries, saving an estimated $3.5 million in bank fees. Similarly, the UNHCR has partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation to deliver aid to Ukrainian refugees via the USDC stablecoin. The potential market for these technologies in the non-profit sector is substantial, with projections estimating the market could reach $5.4 billion by 2031, growing at a compound annual rate of nearly 50%. Studies have shown digital aid delivery can reduce recipients' transportation costs by 20% and time spent collecting funds by 7%. The SKUx platform allows for the delivery of benefits and payments via SMS, QR codes, or mobile wallets without requiring a traditional bank account, a critical feature for reaching unbanked populations. This addresses common hurdles in emerging markets, such as gaps in digital literacy and mobile phone ownership, particularly the disparity where women in low- and middle-income countries are 17% less likely to own a smartphone than men.