KARACHI: Providing financial access to thousands of Pakistani dairy farmers as part of its mission of empowering societies, Easypaisa has collaborated with Nestlé Pakistan to make disbursement of milk collection payments swift, easy, and transparent.
The partnership would also feature an awareness campaign for farmers where Easypaisa would train them to take full advantage of the Easypaisa mobile account services, including attractive savings products and mass market health and life insurance.
Under this partnership, Easypaisa is providing Telenor SIMs and registering Easypaisa mobile accounts of around 15,000 farmers across Pakistan to transfer funds into their accounts on a weekly basis.
For unparalleled convenience, Easypaisa ensures delivery of the payment to the farmer’s Easypaisa mobile account that they can withdraw from the nearest Easypaisa retailer. This would be a great relief for the dairy farmers since they would not have to carry cash to their homes from the milk centres and be in a vulnerable position of being robbed or travelling long distances to collect their hard earned money.
Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations lists Pakistan as the fourth-largest milk-producing nation in the world with its dairy industry being a major contributor to the GDP. Every year, Nestlé pays over Rs 22 billion for milk sourcing in Pakistan; around 150,000 dairy farmers supply close to half a billion tonnes of milk a year through Nestlé’s extensive chain of over 2,500 milk collection centres. Prior to Easypaisa’s collaboration with Nestlé, most of the dairy farmers received their payments in cash from the supply agent routed via the traditional banking channel.
On the collaboration, Telenor Pakistan Chief Financial Service Officer Muhammad Yahya Khan said, “This partnership is a true demonstration of Easypaisa’s vision to empower people by making financial services available. We are proud and humbled to be facilitating the farmers with convenient financial services and encouraging them to increase their production. We hope through this collaboration, we help Pakistan become the largest milk producing nation in the world.”
“Nestlé is excited about entering into an agreement with Easypaisa for payment to our farmers,” said Nestlé Pakistan Finance and Controls Head John Davis. “This will allow the farmers to be paid through a mobile account and the farmers can withdraw cash from any of the Easypaisa outlets at their convenience. Apart from speedy, direct and transparent payment to the farmers, it opens the doors of mobile financial services for them.”
Being the country’s second largest mobile network, Telenor Pakistan already enjoys a strong relationship and trust with its 36 million customers. Easypaisa, being the country’s first and largest branchless banking solution, has reinforced this trust with 20 million customers conducing over 650,000 Easypaisa transactions every day. While more than a hundred million Pakistanis still go unbanked, and banks do little for the financial inclusion of the long tail customers, Easypaisa continues to fill the vacuum and provide masses with easy access to innovative mobile financial solutions.
Easypaisa’s first disbursement is scheduled in April 2016 and is expected to channelise more than Rs 1 billion to the farmers annually.
Pakistan’s first and largest branchless banking solution, Easypaisa, was launched jointly by Tameer Micro Finance Bank and Telenor Pakistan in 2009. Easypaisa has the largest financial footprint in Pakistan with over 75,000 shops in more than 800 cities across the country. Nearly 650,000 transactions are conducted on Easypaisa every day by 20 million active customers. In 2015, Easypaisa moved nearly 3% of Pakistan’s GDP. It has the largest product portfolio of services for its customers including remittances, payments, savings and insurance and offers ATM cards and IBFT services that work with all banks connected through 1-Link in Pakistan. In February 2014, out of more than 250 mobile money services around the world, Easypaisa was awarded two GSMA Awards, including the ‘Best Mobile Money Service in the World’ at the Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Spain.