4.4.5. Digital Plus for Financial Products other than Mobile Money (e.g. loans, insurance, agrovouchers)
DESCRIPTION
Digital Plus provides additional services on top of mobile banking infrastructure. Examples include loans, insurance (e.g. crop insurance), or agro-vouchers, among others. Mobile banking infrastructure is conducive to a more secure financial market, and Digital Plus is the term that encompasses various strategies for USAID to take advantage of this infrastructure to provide an even stronger foundation.
CONSTRAINTS ADDRESSED
- Ease / cost of collecting payments
- Transaction costs associated with originating and managing loans to target sector/region
ADVANTAGES
Coming soon.
DISADVANTAGES
Coming soon.
MUST HAVE’S, CRITICAL POINTS, OR QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
Coming soon.
VIGNETTE: DIGITAL FINANCIAL SERVICES IN THE HAITIAN MANGO INDUSTRY
SITUATION
The Haiti Hope Project (the Project) was a five-year public-private partnership launched in 2010 among businesses, multilateral development institutions, the U.S. Government and non-profits designed to create sustainable economic opportunities for 25,000 Haitian mango farmers and their families and contribute to the long term development and revitalization of the agricultural sector. As part of efforts to organize and support growers and improve market linkages between producers and exporters, the Project worked with a mango exporter (Perry Export) to use Digicel’s TchoTcho Mobile (TTM) (now rebranded Mon Cash) to pay the producers.
STRUCTURE
In order to test and scale the DFS system in rural areas, the Project executed the pilot in three stages: an internal pilot using DFS to pay project field staff, an external pilot pay farmers the less time-sensitive post-season premium payments, and finally real-time payments for mango deliveries.
IMPACT
Despite the start-up challenges cited by TNS, overall satisfaction levels were high enough among growers, cooperatives, and export enterprises that TNS decided to expand its pilot and proceed to the third phase of real-time payments for mango deliveries. At the beginning of the mango season, the exporter asked farmers if they would prefer to be paid through DFS or checks; the majority chose DFS. Over the course of the 2015 mango season, 1,503 farmers received payment via TchoTcho mobile for mango sales, representing over $260,000 in payments.