Farmers Foresee Digital Payment Transactions

Dec 24 , 2022

Farmers are set to buy agricultural inputs such as fertilisers through the digital payment systems of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE). The Bank has partnered with the Oromia Cooperatives Agency to enable the payment system, with officials signing an agreement last week. According to the officials, the system allows farmers to use CBE mobile banking and CBE Birr to buy inputs from the Agency and Unions in their respective areas after depositing 30,000 Br, allowing transactions without bank accounts or visits to CBE branches. The Bank's President, Abe Sano, said the system would help expedite the transactions in the agricultural sector, pledging to digitise the scheme fully next year. CBE has been providing loans to farmers in the region to purchase agricultural inputs for nearly three decades, with the total value of loans distributed now reaching 36 billion Br.