NAIROBI, Aug 10 – KCB Bank Kenya, Mastercard and Heifer International Kenya have launched a nine-month pilot programme to digitise financial transactions for 30,000 smallholder dairy farmers, seeking to strengthen their access to formal financing.
The Farmer Visibility Project will work with dairy farmers and cooperatives to digitally record milk deliveries, payments, savings and purchases of agricultural inputs. The transaction histories are expected to provide financial institutions with clearer evidence of farmers’ income, cash flows and business activity.
The initiative targets a longstanding challenge in Kenya’s smallholder dairy sector, where farmers frequently rely on cash transactions and informal records. Limited financial records can make it difficult for lenders to assess farmers’ creditworthiness and restrict their access to loans and input financing.
Payment delays through cooperatives can also create liquidity challenges for farmers and encourage some producers to sell milk through informal channels. By creating digital records of transactions, the programme aims to improve transparency while giving farmers greater visibility over their financial activity.
“Smallholder farmers are entrepreneurs. They are business owners, suppliers, employers and investors in their communities. Yet many remain invisible to the financial systems and markets that could help them grow,” said Wairimu Munyinyi-Wahome, Country Director of Heifer International Kenya.
She added, “This is more than digitizing transactions. It is about recognising farmers as business people, giving them greater control over their own data and ensuring that digital technology creates real economic opportunities.”
Mastercard will provide its Farm Pass capabilities through its Community Pass platform. The technology will establish digital profiles for participating farmers and capture transactions across the dairy value chain, including milk payments and agricultural input purchases.
The platform is also designed to facilitate card issuance and digital payments in rural communities where access to conventional financial services remains limited.
“By helping farmers build secure digital transaction records, we are not only supporting greater financial inclusion but also creating stronger foundations for long-term growth and resilience for dairy farmers across Kenya,” said Shehryar Ali, Mastercard’s senior vice president and country manager for East Africa and Indian Ocean Islands.
KCB Bank Kenya will oversee the opening of farmer accounts, digital payments and card issuance under the programme. The bank will also support agents and merchants capable of accepting digital transactions and provide participating farmers with access to financial products such as credit, savings and insurance.
The initiative reflects a broader push to use digital financial infrastructure to bring smallholder producers into formal financial systems. For dairy farmers, establishing verifiable transaction histories could provide lenders with a more complete picture of their economic activity and potentially create new pathways to working capital and other forms of financing.
The success of the nine-month pilot could therefore provide a model for expanding digital financial services across Kenya’s agricultural sector, particularly among smallholders whose economic activity remains poorly captured by traditional financial systems.
