Building on the World Bank’s Haiti report: Could digital finance help fight gang violence? | Associate Writer

The World Bank’s new report identifies insecurity as a major constraint on Haiti’s economic recovery and documents how armed groups finance themselves. Its analysis raises another question: Could digital finance help make gang violence harder to finance?

The World Bank’s new report, Haiti: Pathways to Growth Amid Rising Risks, presents a stark picture of Haiti’s security and economic crisis. By May 2026, gang violence had displaced 1.47 million people, around 12 percent of the population, while armed groups controlled much of the capital and surrounding areas. The report makes a compelling case that restoring security and a functioning state in metropolitan Port-au-Prince is essential to economic recovery.

But reading the report left me with a question: Could digital finance help Haiti fight gang violence by making illicit financial flows easier to trace?

The question grows out of the report’s own analysis.

To be clear, the report does not propose digital finance as a tool for fighting gangs. That is the question I am drawing from its diagnosis of how armed groups finance themselves and from its separate recommendation to expand digital-payment infrastructure.

The World Bank explains that armed groups have become increasingly autonomous partly because they have developed their own sources of income. It identifies kidnapping, illegal tolls, extortion, smuggling and trafficking among their revenue sources. The report also points to illicit financial flows, including money laundering through real estate, informal transfer systems and the private security sector.

In other words, gangs do not survive on weapons alone. They need money.

The report discusses the security response, including the international security force and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration. It also emphasizes jobs and economic opportunities as important to longer-term security.

These are essential. But what about another part of the equation: How can Haiti’s financial system itself be used to make gang activity harder to finance?

Could digital finance become part of Haiti’s security strategy

One possibility deserves more discussion: progressively moving Haiti away from its heavy dependence on physical cash and toward a predominantly digital financial system.

I am not suggesting that digital payments can defeat gangs or that Haiti could simply eliminate cash tomorrow. Police, justice, border control and other security measures remain indispensable.

The question is more specific: Would a more digital economy make it easier to follow the money?

Cash can circulate with little trace. Extortion payments, ransoms, illegal tolls and proceeds from illicit activities can change hands without producing the transaction records available in formal financial systems.

Digital payments do not eliminate crime, and criminal organizations will adapt. But digital transactions can leave records. Combined with appropriate legal safeguards and stronger financial intelligence, those records could potentially help authorities identify suspicious financial flows and make it more difficult for criminal networks to move and conceal money. As particular channels become more traceable, gangs may shift toward foreign currency or in-kind payments, which is why digitalization cannot stand alone.

Traceability also creates risks that cannot be treated as secondary. Poor and rural households could be excluded if digital systems are costly or unreliable. Weak privacy protections could expose citizens to surveillance or misuse of their data. Victims paying extortion or ransom could face additional danger if their identities or transaction histories were accessed by criminal networks or compromised officials. Any expansion of digital payments would therefore require strong data protection, restricted access, cybersecurity and clear legal safeguards.

The scale of informality and the country’s infrastructure constraints also make an abrupt transition unrealistic. The report cites an estimate that informal employment accounts for 88 percent of non-agricultural jobs. Its high-frequency phone survey, which covers people in households with a mobile phone, found that only 30 percent of respondents lived in a household with access to electricity; national access may be even lower. These realities strengthen the case for a phased approach focused first on transactions where traceability could have the greatest public value.

A gradual transition could begin at targeted points where the state has direct influence: government salaries and supplier payments, taxes, customs transactions, public services, remittance receipt and large business payments. The report notes that Haiti collects more than half of its tax revenue at the border, making customs a particularly important financial chokepoint. Digital payments could then become increasingly accessible to other businesses and households.

The objective would go beyond modernizing Haiti’s payment system. It would also be about reducing the financial opacity in which criminal economies can operate.

Digitalization would not be the only financial tool. Stronger financial intelligence, anti-money-laundering controls, asset tracing and closer cooperation among financial institutions, tax and customs authorities, and criminal investigators also deserve consideration.

Digital finance would be most useful as part of a broader financial-integrity agenda. That agenda could include better measurement of illicit financial flows, stronger financial-intelligence capacity, greater transparency in real-estate ownership and beneficial ownership, and closer oversight of remittance agents and other money-transfer channels. Digital records have limited value if institutions lack the authority, skills and independence to analyze them and act on credible evidence.

But the broader question interests me most: Could Haiti deliberately design its transition toward digital finance as part of its security strategy?

Taking the discussion one step further

The World Bank report provides an important starting point because it connects insecurity and economic recovery so clearly. It also documents something fundamental: Haiti’s gangs have developed economic activities that help sustain their operations.

Perhaps the next step is to ask more explicitly how economic and financial policy could be used to disrupt that model.

The World Bank notes that this report sets out high-level priorities and that a forthcoming government-led development strategy, supported by development partners, is expected to translate them into more detailed investment recommendations.

That creates an opportunity to take the discussion further.

As the World Bank and Haiti’s other development partners support the forthcoming government-led development strategy, I would be interested in seeing this question explored further: What concrete financial mechanisms could Haiti put in place to weaken the economic foundations of gang violence?

Digital finance may be one of them. There may be others.

Haiti certainly needs to fight the guns. But when the World Bank’s own analysis shows that gangs depend on extortion, kidnapping, trafficking and illicit financial flows, perhaps the country should also ask how to fight the money that keeps those guns operating.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of DevelopmentAid.