NIGERIA: MTN MoMo makes payments easy for cocoa, poultry farmers

MTN Mobile Money Limited is in the process of providing easy and faster payment platforms for the cocoa and poultry industries in the country with little human intervention.

General Manager for MTN Ghana Mobile Money Limited, Eli Hini disclosed this to journalist in a webinar, saying that MTN Mobile Money is currently working with cocoa processing companies to buy and pay farmers directly without using clerks or agents.

He explained that the platform is more secured and safer and would ensure quicker payment to cocoa farmers without any delays and excuses, adding that it would also provide farmers easy and safe access to their funds.

The poultry farmers, on the other hand, would be able to to buy and pay for inputs from suppliers using the platform, according to Eli Hini.

“This platform will bring the suppliers and the farmers together for easy and safe transactions,” he emphasized.

The initiative forms part of MTN’s digitization of the agricultural value chain as the company transition into a digital operator.

Under the initiative, the identification of cocoa and poultry farmers, as well as the whole process of procurement and payment will be digitized.

MTN Mobile Money, in collaboration with the Global System Mobile Association (GSMA), has helped to improve the livelihood of cocoa farmers and cocoa growing communities under a digitization project.

The project offers a unique opportunity for cocoa farmers to transition from cash to digital payments with the view to adding value to their trade.

A significant number of cocoa farmers in the targeted communities have been largely digitized and have access to a suit of financial transactions via MTN mobile money.

According to Eli Hini, the project has boosted the adoption of mobile technology by farmers to improve productivity and their livelihoods.

All these are being done alongside a US$2.5 million initiative by MTN Ghana to use artificial intelligence (AI) to fight mobile money fraudUS$2.5 million initiative by MTN Ghana to use artificial intelligence (AI) to fight mobile money fraud, which has become rampant on the MTN MoMo platform, arguably because it an overwhelmingly high percentage of the funds within the mobile money ecosystem floats on it.

MTN Mobile Money currently controls about 70% mobile money market share, but Eli Hini said it has not always been so, explaining that for the first five years of its operation, MTN MoMo actually made losses but the leadership of the company believed in the prospects and kept investing in it.

Asked if MTN Mobile Money was working towards becoming a fully-fledged bank, Eli Hini said that is not yet on the table, adding that they are currently focused on improving cashless transactions and ensuring the greater majority of Ghanaians adopt electronic transaction as a first choice over cash.

He said MTN and mobile money in general is here to complement banks and not to compete with them, adding that their 180,000 plus mobile money merchants are taking banking services to the doorstep of the over 70% of Ghanaians who don’t have bank accounts or do not have banks in their communities.

SOURCE: NEWS GHANA