+ Official report on Mercy Corps’ website 

Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation – CTA (May 2015)

11 March 2014

Spire Research and Consulting was appointed by Mercy Corps – a global aid agency – to assess the potential for migrating Indonesian agricultural value-chain payments to mobile technology to improve the livelihoods of farmers. Mercy Corps published the results of this study on their corporate website.

Spire’s study was conducted among farmers and value-chain actors consisting of buyers, sellers and financial institutions as well as other payment actors. The study assessed the agricultural market for five types of crops in Indonesia: maize, rice, chili, potato and palm oil. The study assessed the potential for introducing mobile value-chain payments and the implications of such a move for farmers and value-chain actors.

The findings revealed that Indonesia’s agricultural value-chain eco-system is a complex one. It varies in accordance with the type of crop and region in question. Moreover, farmers still predominantly use cash for value-chain payments such as to purchase fertilizers, seeds and other input supplies. However, most of the actors involved in the marketing and distribution system in Indonesia prefer bank transfers.

According to the Spire study, if mobile-value payments take off, this would spur investments within the value chain, enhancing business opportunities for buyers, traders, input dealers and financial service providers. Mobile payments would help make high volume and low-value transaction more convenient, as well as providing a more traceable, efficient, economical and transparent payment method.

For media enquiries, please contact:

Nidhi Singh
Senior Executive, Group Corporate Communications
Spire Research and Consulting
Phone: (91) 124 646 5499
E-mail: nidhi.singh@spireresearch.com