Govt hails MCash’s e-voucher system as company wins prestigious UK award

MCash Uganda a  Fintech that works with businesses to provide financial solutions  has been honored with the presitigious PayTech award by Fintech futures for the best contribution to the economic mobility in payments, with our innovative e-voucher system.

During a function held at the Merchant Taylor's Hall in London, M-Cash Uganda was honored for creating a simple payments platform for local governments and impact partners to offer transparent subsidies to developing communities.

The system was first implemented in 2019-2022 for the Agriculture Cluster Development Program(ACDP), led by the government of Uganda in partnership with the World Bank to help farmers access subsidized quality agro-inputs, in order to boost productivity as well as foster financial inclusion.

Speaking on Friday, Henry Nakelet Opolot, the Commissioner in charge of agricultural extension and skills management at the Ministry of Agriculture, said the system developed by MCash helped government provide good quality agro-inputs to farmers, unlike previous interventions which failed on this role.

“This system has helped facilitate the delivery of  good quality inputs to farmers. I am happy that we recommended MCash to implement this project. In case government thinks of another project, we will use e-voucher to provide inputs for farmers. This is a bigger opportunity to use this system in the Parish Development Model,” Opolot said.

“The issue of the quality of inputs has been outstanding but using the voucher system, farmers are able to track the source of inputs so that if they don’t perform you can go back to the source and if confirmed by the inspector that inputs were not of quality, you can ask for refund or gives more quality inputs.”

The Ministry of Agriculture official insisted that the e-voucher system has been able to bring responsibility within the supply chain.

He said the system also helps government monitor farmers and what they grow.

“Previously because of provision of fake inputs, there was lack of ownership on the side of farmers who didn’t feel ownership of what they received. There was therefore little impact in terms of productivity. Now with the Parish Development Model program where money is given to farmers, it will be good to use this system to help them buy inputs to ensure farmers receive money on their wallets but cant withdraw it and can only use it to buy inputs,” Opolot said.

M-Cash CEO Edith Kutesa explained how the e-voucher system works.

“A farmer has a portion of the input to pay but also has to order electronically in real time for the input. The wallet allows the farmer to pay his contribution in a trusted account in the bank,”Kutesa said.

She added that the farmer has option to use USSD to connect wallet to MTN mobile money or Airtel Money which connects with MCash to pay the contribution to the trusted bank account  and this means he has already ordered.

“The farmer orders what he wants and different companies selected by Ministry of Agriculture will show and the farmer will have a choice on which supplier to use and their price. The system will immediately calculate the percentage of their contribution which varies between 33% and 50% . The first cycle the farmer will pay 33% and will get 67% subsidy and there is a notification to the supplier and government side so that the money from the subsidy is removed from the wallet of farmers which makes it 100%.”

The MCash CEO said the money is not sent unless the farmer receives the inputs and confirms through a PIN sent to them by the system.

“The beauty is that all this is recorded in the back end and on a daily basis we can produce reports that show Ministry of Agriculture the number of farmers who have ordered and redeemed and the kind of inputs highly demanded for accountability purposes. This is a good system.”