Redefining Value From Outcome Based Funding to Tradeable Impact 2025

The tradeable impact opportunity2 Tradeable impact redefines value creation by turning social outcomes into investable assets, but faces complex design challenges. The concept of tradeable impact represents a fundamental economic shift, redefining how value is perceived and monetized. By transforming previously untradeable social impacts into financial assets, it’s possible to cultivate a new market, unlock revenue streams for impactful organizations, create investment opportunities and reshape the role of social value in economic growth. For decades, companies, governments and philanthropists have attempted to address pressing social challenges through various financial mechanisms. However, these efforts have often been fragmented, constrained by limited funding and disconnected from market-driven incentives. Tradeable impact offers a new approach that integrates social impact into the financial system, making it an investable, tradeable and scalable asset. Already today, rewards for impact can be embedded directly into investments in the form of impact-linked finance (ILF). This mechanism lowers the cost of capital for the creator of impact in line with the achievement of impact objectives. These investments can be traded on the market today, similar to other financial products. CASE STUDY 2 Zlto, South Africa Zlto is a South African digital rewards platform designed to tackle youth unemployment by incentivizing community engagement and skill development. Developed by RLabs, it enables young individuals to earn digital currency (Zlto) by participating in activities such as volunteering, attending training sessions or completing micro-tasks. These earnings can be redeemed for essentials like food, clothing, transport and mobile data at over 3,000 partner retailers, including major chains like Shoprite and PEP Stores. Each activity completed through the platform contributes to a user’s digital impact CV, a verifiable record of their work and skills, stored securely using blockchain technology. This system not only provides tangible rewards but also helps build a credible work history, enhancing employability. Since its inception, Zlto has facilitated over 3 million transactions and engaged more than 500,000 members. The platform has expanded beyond South Africa to countries like the United Kingdom, Tanzania and Nigeria. Tradeable impact introduces an entirely new market by assigning monetary value to previously overlooked social and environmental contributions. Much like the carbon credit system (in which financial incentives drive emission reductions), impact credits (ICs) can economically value activities such as education, poverty alleviation and public health improvement. Already today, the OBF and impact-linked finance markets are linking outcomes to payments or financial incentives. However, the markets are regularly limited either to the available philanthropic capital, fiscal budgets or willingness-to-pay by companies that pay for impact as part of their CSR/ sustainability priorities or regulatory requirements. This paper explores an evolution of this concept to a closed-circuit store of value through either financial assets or an actual currency. 2.1 Tradeable impact as a market expansion opportunity Redefining Value: From Outcome-Based Funding to Tradeable Impact 9