America Wasted $160 Million Trying To Get Afghanistan To Use E-Payments (vice.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: The country might be home to America's longest-running war, but the US has spent more time, energy, and money trying to rebuild Afghanistan than it has spent killing the Taliban. American taxpayers send billions to Kabul every year and every year billions disappear into the pockets of Afghan government officials. Electronic payment systems would go a long way to solving that problem. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) wanted to do just that. The Agency figured if it could convince those at corruption hotspots, such as customs agents and border guards, to use e-payment methods, then it might curb the amount of cash those agents pocketed every day. Between 2009 and 2017, USAID spent $160 million and partnered American tech companies to set up e-pay in Afghanistan, according to a new report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). The goal was to get the border guards trained and using the new methods, with an aim of 75 percent of all customs transactions paid electronically by 2017. As of today, less than one percent of those transactions are electronic, SIGAR reports. And custom officials loathe the system. "It's a very long and inefficient process and that's why people do not use this method," one Afghan custom official told SIGAR agents.

Comments

Gosh, well, who'd have thought..?"

[Harold Halloway]

"We tried convincing corrupt customs officials to change to a new payment method which would prevent them from stealing large sums of money but they weren't interested. We are at a loss to explain why that might be."

Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hey guys, we think you're corrupt and stealing money, so we want you to adopt this new system that will make it harder to be corrupt and steal money."

And we're surprised the plan failed?

E-payments aren't the usual in the US, either

[JohnFen]

The numbers have likely changed, but in 2012 about 50% of all financial transactions were done with cash in the US. For transactions involving amounts of $25 or less, the figure rises to 75% in cash.

Getting a 75% adoption rate in Afghanistan seems over-the-top optimistic from the start.

They sound smarter than us

[grasshoppa]

We ( the US ) "upgraded" to chip technology, and now a transaction which took 2 seconds before takes almost a minute now. The situation is exasperated by the software "upgrades" at the registers which make them run slower now than they did 10 years ago ( they were fast back then ). The situation is so bad at some stores that I've started carrying cash again because of how long a digital transaction takes.

Maybe these Afgan folks are on to something here.

Re:They sound smarter than us

[Anonymous Coward]

One minute?? How did you manage to take something Europe had been using for years, with no speed problems, and make it run slow?

I've thought so for some time

[fyngyrz]

Electronic payment systems would go a long way to solving that problem.

Problem? This isn't a bug, it's a feature. Look: it channels vast amounts of tax dollars into the pockets of US corporations, while also propping up the government of Afghanistan so as to channel even more tax dollars into the US military-industrial complex. The (cough) "problems" will simply result in more tax dollars flowing into the proper pockets (IOW, not yours, and not mine.)

Meanwhile, the average net worth of a US congress member is over a million dollars, the US education system is starved for funds and the ACA is deemed "too expensive."

Looks to me like the system is doing exactly what it's intended to be doing. The oligarchy gets richer, and most everyone else either treads water or gets poorer. Hurrah! How 'bout those Kardashians, eh?