KCB Bank Kenya, Mastercard, KCB Foundation and Heifer International Kenya have launched the Farmer Visibility Project, a nine-month pilot designed to bring 30,000 smallholder dairy farmers into a more structured digital financial ecosystem.
The initiative will digitize milk deliveries, payments, savings and input purchases, giving farmers transaction histories that can make their income and business activity more visible to banks and other financial-service providers.
The programme combines Mastercard’s digital infrastructure with KCB’s banking services and Heifer International’s agricultural expertise, targeting one of the persistent barriers to rural finance: farmers generating income without formal records that lenders can use to assess their businesses.
Key Overview
- The nine-month pilot will target 30,000 smallholder dairy farmers across Kenya.
- Milk deliveries, payments, savings and farm-input purchases will be captured digitally.
- Mastercard will provide Farm Pass capabilities through its Community Pass platform.
- KCB Bank Kenya will support account opening, digital payments, farmer cards and access to financial services.
- KCB Foundation will support farmer engagement, financial literacy, cooperative systems and programme coordination.
- Digital transaction histories could help farmers demonstrate their cash flows and improve access to credit, savings, insurance and input financing.
- The pilot could be expanded more widely across Kenya if the model proves successful.
Creating Financial Records for Previously Invisible Farmers
A central problem the initiative seeks to address is that many dairy farmers remain economically active but financially difficult for formal lenders to assess.
Cash transactions and informal record-keeping can leave farmers without reliable evidence of milk sales, income flows or regular business activity. That limits the information available to banks when assessing creditworthiness, even where a farmer may operate a viable agricultural business.
The Farmer Visibility Project aims to replace part of that informal system with digital records covering milk deliveries, payments, savings and purchases of agricultural inputs.
Over time, those records could provide lenders with a clearer view of a farmer’s production cycles and cash flows, potentially allowing financial products to be designed around the realities of dairy farming rather than conventional salary-based lending models.
The initiative will also provide participating farmers and cooperatives with support in digital and financial literacy, registration, account opening and the use of digital payment tools.
Heifer International Kenya Country Director Wairimu Munyinyi-Wahome said the goal extends beyond simply converting cash transactions into electronic ones, with the project intended to make farmers more visible to financial systems and markets while giving them greater control over their data.
Mastercard Brings Farm Pass Into Kenya’s Dairy Chain
Mastercard will participate as the project’s digital technology partner through its Farm Pass capabilities, delivered using the wider Community Pass infrastructure.
The technology will help establish digital farmer profiles, track transactions and link participants across the agricultural value chain. It is designed to operate in communities where digital access can be constrained by factors including unreliable connectivity, limited smartphone ownership and inconsistent identification.
The technology builds on a broader Mastercard and Heifer International partnership announced in 2023 to expand digitization and financial inclusion among smallholder farmers in Africa.
Community Pass was developed partly to create digital identities and transaction footprints for people operating in remote or underserved communities. In agriculture, that means farmers can build records of economic activity while gaining connections to buyers, input suppliers and financial institutions.
For Kenya’s dairy farmers, Farm Pass will support transaction tracking, payment and credit enablement, card issuance and digital purchases.
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KCB Connects Digital Records to Financial Products
While Mastercard provides the technology layer, KCB Bank Kenya will provide the banking infrastructure needed to convert those digital records into broader financial participation.
KCB will support farmer account opening, digital payment solutions and farmer card issuance, while working with agents and merchants capable of accepting digital transactions.
Farmers may also gain access to relevant products including credit, savings and insurance, creating a pathway from transaction digitization to wider financial inclusion.
KCB Foundation will handle a different part of the programme, supporting farmer engagement, capacity building, financial literacy, cooperative systems, monitoring and coordination.
Supporting cooperatives is particularly important because payment delays and cash-flow difficulties within cooperative systems can encourage farmers to divert milk into informal sales channels. Digitized records and payments could improve transparency and help farmers track what they have delivered and what they are owed.
Separate reporting indicates the programme is expected to work through 60 dairy cooperatives and farmer producer organisations across Kenya’s Central, Rift Valley and Western regions.
Digital Payments Could Unlock More Agricultural Finance
The project’s broader significance lies in the connection between payment data and access to capital.
Digitizing transactions does not automatically make a farmer creditworthy, but it can provide lenders with information that was previously unavailable. Regular milk deliveries, consistent payments and patterns of farm-input purchases can help demonstrate whether a farming enterprise generates predictable economic activity.
That could support more tailored lending decisions, including working-capital and input-financing products structured around agricultural production cycles.
For farmers, the potential benefits go beyond credit. More transparent records can also improve financial planning, strengthen relationships with formal buyers and cooperatives, and provide evidence of business activity when applying for other financial products.
The pilot will initially run for nine months and focus on 30,000 farmers. Lessons from the programme are expected to inform wider efforts to modernize dairy payments and could provide a model for scaling digital financial services further across Kenya’s agricultural sector.
If successful, the project could demonstrate how everyday agricultural transaction data can turn previously informal economic activity into a financial record — giving farmers greater visibility to the institutions capable of financing their growth.
Sources: Mastercard Newsroom / Heifer International / The Kenyan Wall Street / TechTrendsKE
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