Mobile Remittance for Small Farmers

Blockchain offers low-cost, rapid, and secure payments, alleviating the financial burden on farmers. Payments can be processed within minutes with minimal transaction fees, eliminating the need for intermediaries like remittances or banks. Mobile payment systems have opened up new opportunities for many smallholder farmers excluded from mainstream financial services. Approximately 450-500 million smallholder farmers, cultivating small plots of land for subsistence and a few cash crops, constitute 85% of the world's farms. These farmers, often located in hyper-rural areas with minimal profits, exemplify the need for improved payment systems for small-scale agriculture.

The financial services enable smallholders to:

• Invest in agriculture

• Relieve liquidity constraints

Blockchain brings fairness in the process of agricultural finance via transparency and shared control accessibility.

Blockchain technology is used in removing counterparty risk for sellers through real time payment, automating and democratizing access to supply chain financing for buyers, and guaranteeing that all consumers have access to the provenance of their commodities to make informed purchase decisions.