Mastercard today announced a collaboration with Gramophone, a leading agritech platform, to provide agri inputs to 2 million smallholder farmers in India via the Mastercard Community Pass platform. The collaboration will facilitate offline payments for farmers in rural and remote areas using the Community Pass financial inclusion card. Gramophone is also likely to offer offline payments and credit to its existing five lakh farmers.
Community Pass offers a digital ecosystem for purchasers seeking sustainable sources of high-quality produce at competitive market pricing and supply chain financing and smallholder farmers seeking reliable markets, fair prices, and credit. The platform unites multiple agro-sector stakeholders in a centralised agricultural marketplace, enhancing their aggregate positive influence on farming communities. Community Pass services will also feature an offline payment card and input credit, which will be available in the future months.
This relationship with Gramophone will ensure that farmers may get the necessary inputs at a fair price. The program will be carried out later this year, beginning with inputs and offline payments, and credit will be available early next year.
Furthermore, Gramophone intends to launch new loyalty/cash-back systems for its subscribers with the offline-enabled card. Gramophone hopes that this relationship would make it easier for farmer producer organisations and small merchants to acquire operating cash to drive inputs and scale their businesses.
“In line with the Government of India’s vision to digitize the agriculture sector, Mastercard has been working to bring key stakeholders in the agri ecosystem onto one platform to ease credit and input access for farmers and enhance their incomes. This collaboration with Gramophone will ensure that farmers can access quality inputs of their choice, on easy credit terms, as well as the benefits of digital payments even without internet connectivity or smartphone availability,” said Ricardo Pareja, Head of Community Pass Markets, Mastercard.
“At Gramophone, we have consistently delivered top-tier agronomy advisory and quality products through our, in-house technology platform enabling Input Commerce. Now, we are excited to add Mastercard’s advanced technology stack and partner networks to further enhance India’s agricultural ecosystem. Starting with a pilot in Madhya Pradesh, we will aim to support farmers across India by increasing their incomes by 50-60% through access to inputs and credit,” said Tauseef Khan, Co-founder, Gramophone.
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Mastercard Community Pass is a shared, interoperable digital infrastructure for rural people that has benefited over 2 million Indian farmers from 25 districts in eight states to date.
