In a move to help small dairy farmers digitise, Airtel Payments Bank announced on Tuesday that it will partner with Stellapps to facilitate cashless payments. Stellapps offers financial management programs across the dairy value chain and strives to improve financial inclusion for dairy farmers through its mooPay Fintech platform. The brand has been working with dairies to help with direct payments to the bank accounts of dairy farmers. Apart from enabling a cashless economy, this will also bring more farmers into the fold of the financial system.
Stellapps identified a major challenge in the lives of dairy farmers – the long walk to the ATM to get cash out. The inability to withdraw cash as and when needed contributed to financial challenges in their lives, something that Stellapps wants to eradicate. By partnering with Airtel Payments Bank, Stellapps will ensure that its milk collection centers double up as banking centers. These banking centers will be instrumental in helping farmers open bank accounts, accessing Aadhar-enabled payments, withdrawing cash, pay their bills and more.
The ecosystem has already been piloted in Kanpur and Varanasi (UP) and Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh).
“We are very excited to partner with Airtel Payments Bank as it will strengthen our own service offering, help over one million dairy farmers with their banking needs and drive financial inclusion in the rural economy,” said Rahul Mallick, CEO – Stellapps FinTech and Value Added Services.
“We are delighted to partner with Stellapps to enable cashless payment transfers for the small dairy farmers. Direct payments help farmers to be financially independent. Our unique and extensive distribution network allows us to offer the benefits of formal banking to these farmers. The initial success of this initiative has encouraged us to expand it nationally,” added Ganesh Ananthanarayanan, Chief Operating Officer, Airtel Payments Bank.
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