"I am personally satisfied with the Tigo Cash payment system and have seen that the other farmers have embraced it as well. With this system I am ensured timely payment of my sales and can safely move around with my money without any fear of getting robbed. I can also send money to my brother and sisters and purchase airtime on my phone without removing physical cash from my wallet."
– Eric Glatse, participating farmer
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Our Experience
Ghana Rice Mobile Finance (RiMFin) Pilot
Project Description
Agribusiness Systems International (ASI) used the Visa Innovation Grant to enable payments for smallholder rice farmers via mobile devices in the rural Volta Region of southeastern Ghana. In partnership with Global Agri-Development Company Ltd. (GADCO), a major rice producer, miller, and provider of extension services, ASI initiated the Rice Mobile Finance Pilot (RiMFin) to introduce a more efficient, secure payment mechanism, reduce side selling, and maintain loyalty in the rice supply chain.
To introduce the new mobile money platform, ASI and GADCO facilitated alliances with Tigo Cash, the mobile money transfer product of Millicom Ghana Ltd. (one of Ghana’s leading mobile network operators) and smallholder rice farmers. To align incentives of these different stakeholders, ASI drew on its experience in the agricultural sector and the technical assistance of its mobile payments partner OpenRevolution.
Project Approach
Before RiMFin, rice farmers dealt exclusively in cash payments from aggregators or traders. The cash-based nature of payments posed problems along the entire rice supply chain from risk of theft and payment delays for farmers to side-selling and lack of transparency and traceability for buyers.
To address these issues and develop a robust mobile payment system, RiMFin undertook the following activities to facilitate the transition of over $345,765 in payments to smallholder farmers from cash to mobile money:
- Development of financial literacy and mobile money product training modules
- Provision of 32 training events that educated 722 smallholder rice farmers on Tigo Cash and financial literacy
- Registration and activation of 606 farmers on the Tigo Cash Mobile Money Platform
- Recruitment and training of 12 Tigo Cash mobile money agents
- Distribution of seed money (soft launch), in which Tigo Cash accounts for 300 farmers were loaded with GHC 10 ($4) for trial usage
- Execution of hard launch (bulk payments), which successfully distributed payments to farmers from GADCO through Tigo Cash
Impact and Results to Date
The RiMFin pilot has reached more than 700 farmers with $345,765 in mobile payments to provide proof of concept for subsequent scale-up to GADCO’s supply chain of 10,000 farmers—over 60% of which are women—and their estimated 45,000 family members.
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