Zakat is an effective Islamic social financial tool that could be used to eliminate global poverty. The pandemic has turned back the world's poverty clock and as such, more work is required to bring equitable and shared prosperity to the world. International organizations that serve humanity could be used as intermediaries of zakat to reach out to those categories of legal recipients of zakat who are most deserved of such assistance, but who are unidentified and unreachable by the zakat organizations. This is with the ultimate objective of enhancing the effectivity of zakat as a social finance tool. However, using international organizations as zakat intermediaries is not a straightforward issue and limited literature are available on the matter to understand the contemporary practice and challenges in this regard. As such, using a qualitative research approach, this chapter sheds light on the issues revolving around the internationalization of zakat by looking at the existing practice of it by identifying the challenges in doing so. This chapter proposes a way to resolve the existing issues in internationalization of zakat by leveraging on blockchain technology where a proposition is made to introduce a crypto zakat platform. This chapter also reveals that in contemporary times, there are three ways in which international organizations have been involved as zakat intermediaries: by creating a zakat fund for specific purpose; by receiving zakat money to be distributed to transform the societies in countries other than where the zakat was collected; and by creating partnership with zakat organizations to use zakat money in the respective country in which zakat was collected. It is anticipated that soon the stakeholders of zakat would join hands with international organizations to effectively manage zakat to alleviate poverty in the world exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic.

Zakat is compulsory alms given by eligible Muslims around the world every year to legal beneficiaries derived from the Holy Book of Muslims: Quran. These legal beneficiaries include the poor and needy. The general rule followed in the distribution of zakat among Muslims is that zakat money collected is distributed within the legal recipients found in the geographical area in which it is collected or within the same country. It is hard to find instances where zakat money collected is transported to another country to transform the lives of poor and needy in those communities who require such assistance to improve their lives. The main reason for this is due to the Shariah opinions given by the scholars on the permissibility of transporting zakat money from one country to another. Despite this challenge, Majlis Agama Islam and Adat Istiadat Melayu Perlis (MAIPS), which is the state religious authority of one of the states of Malaysia gave permission to transport zakat from Malaysia to Kenya to support a humanitarian project managed by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). This is a landmark case as MAIPS's decision to transport zakat from Malaysia to Kenya was used to help a drought assistance program in the county of Kitui, located in southern central Kenya that was identified as the worst-affected part of the country.