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> Posted by Jeffrey Riecke, Communications Assistant, CFI

A community health worker in Kenya trained by Pathfinder International, using a mobile phone to collect client data. Photo by Sala Lewis.

Each year billions of dollars in cash payments are distributed by development organizations to individuals in need. Across sectors including agriculture, health, and emergency relief, cash payments are dispersed with the intent of imparting a lasting impact on their recipients. As we’ve discussed in this space previously, dealing with cash instead of electronic payments brings risks and inefficiencies to the parties involved, both development organizations and their payments recipients, too, who are likely to have a lot at stake.

Visa, in partnership with NetHope, a consortium of more than 40 humanitarian organizations, is addressing this opportunity to improve development organizations’ payments systems through the Visa Innovation Grants Program, a new initiative providing funding to development organizations for the modernizing of their payments systems. A few weeks ago the program selected the five winning organizations, who will each receive $US 100,000 for their projects. Representing a breadth of sectors, the five organizations are Agribusiness Systems International (ASI), Freedom from Hunger, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Mercy Corps, and Pathfinder International.

The payments system projects of ASI and Mercy Corps focus on developing mobile money services for farmers and other actors in agriculture value chains. ASI is working with rice farmers in Ghana, and Mercy Corps with smallholder farmers in Indonesia. The payments systems allow farmers to receive timely and secure payments from agricultural cooperatives electronically, rather than by traveling to pick up cash, which requires expending resources, including time that could otherwise be spent tending the farm.

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