Mastercard’s Farmpass Reaches One Million Smallholders in India: Mastercard today announced that it has reached the milestone of benefiting over one million smallholder farmers in India with its Farmpass, a scalable rural and agricultural digitization solution. Leveraging Farm Pass, in 2022 close to Rs. Mastercard processes 180 crore worth of agricultural produce for sale. Working with Lawrencedale Agro Processing India (LEAF) and BASIX social enterprise group, the payments technology company has now set a target of covering 10 million farmers by 2025.
Starting in 2020, Mastercard, LEAF and BASIX are partnering to improve financial inclusion and digital access for farmers in four Indian states: Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. With its good experience and expertise in agritech along with digital and payments technology, in 2023, Mastercard is expanding its Farm Pass solution to five more states including Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Odisha, Telangana, and West Bengal.
Mastercard’s Farm Pass is a digital ecosystem platform that empowers farmers to be part of a formal economic system for farmer data to work offline in remote, unconnected rural areas and to bring together stakeholders in the agriculture sector and create a commercially sustainable ecosystem.
Mastercard and its environmental partners are committed to empowering such farmers by connecting them directly to buyers, enabling them to achieve better value for their produce, providing access to agronomic knowledge and services, and supporting Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs).
Farm Pass is part of a shared, internally operable digital infrastructure within the Social Pass for the rural population. It facilitates access to critical services and reduces the cost of serving all stakeholders, including governments, banks, agricultural entities, and NGOs.
Tarnath, Executive Vice President, Humanitarian & Development, Mastercard, said, “Social Pass is designed to help smallholder farmers pay more and faster. Mastercard is proud to have supported over one million farmers in India last year. In line with the Government of India’s vision of doubling farmers’ income and ensuring financial inclusion, Social Pass addresses the hurdles faced by marginal farmers while seeking access to reliable markets and financial services.”
Palat Vijayaraghavan, Founder & CEO, LEAF, said, “Leveraging our deep expertise in agritech, this partnership with Mastercard has led to the development of many digital products and solutions that are changing the lives of smallholder farmers. Through comprehensive training and capacity building programmes, we will continue to empower farmers and make them smarter.”
D Sattaiah, CEO, BASIX, said, “We are very proud to partner with Mastercard in their efforts to empower Indian farmers. ‘s Farmers’ Market (BFM) will use Mastercard’s technology to ensure complete transparency in agricultural transactions and enable even better price realization for farmers.”
Last year, Mastercard announced plans to expand its Form Pass program to more markets in Asia Pacific in 2023. The company is also in the process of rolling out a unique agricultural invoice discounting platform, a rural financial inclusion card, and additional solutions to digitize the rural ecosystem.
