A customer's access point to a financial service provider, which can include low-tech points of access (e.g., farmer organizations, extension providers, ATMs, etc.) or high-tech points of access (e.g., mobile banking, digital wallets, SMS, etc.)
Analysis: Key insights from a recent ISF survey on the growing ecosystem of Business Development Services (BDS) to help financial service providers (FSPs) better reach smallholders.
Report: In Africa, where agricultural production remains far below potential, companies are working with smallholder farmers to raise crop yields, open up new market opportunities, and strengthen rural economies. In a new case study, AgDevCo’s Smallholder Development Unit features six examples of outgrower schemes that are delivering results.
Report: The MIX – with support from The MasterCard Foundation, UNCDF, and IFC – has published a new report on alternative delivery channels and their impact. The research from MIX also helped support the insights explored in The MasterCard Foundation's report on lessons learned from alternative delivery channels, which can be viewed here.
Analysis: Our learning brief explores the role of digital approaches (across the lending value chain) in making it possible to profitably serve the smallholder market at scale. What do the digital journeys of financial service providers entail? What results are FSPs seeing and what challenges do they face?
Analysis: Direct-to-farmer finance is one channel of reaching smallholder farmers, but it can be challenging for banks not already serving those customer segments.
Community: Opportunity International blog post in 2012 on its use of mobile banking vans.
Delivery Channel
A customer's access point to a financial service provider, which can include low-tech points of access (e.g., farmer organizations, extension providers, ATMs, etc.) or high-tech points of access (e.g., mobile banking, digital wallets, SMS, etc.)