Do agricultural credits really reach the producer? PUSH wants to respond with traceability. On Thursday, October 15, at the Sofitel Hôtel Ivoire, the fintech brought together its partners and the ecosystem that surrounds it to announce a new stage, after more than five years of activity in Ivory Coast. Its ambition is quantified: to digitalize 3,000 billion FCFA of financial flows in the agricultural sectors within 3 years. PUSH relies on its balance sheet. It boasts more than 700,000 individual accounts and more than a million agricultural stakeholders supported. According to figures provided by the company, it also has 100 corporate clients and a network of 5,000 points of sale. Its platform has recorded more than 20 million transactions, for more than 600 billion FCFA in flows. Four agreements were signed with the National Investment Bank (BNI), Ecobank Côte d'Ivoire, Versus Bank and Orange Money. They aim to track funds from the disbursement of bank credits to the payment of beneficiaries. The aim is to verify that the financing is used for the planned operations, particularly in the café-cocoa.

Each partner has its own role. The BNI provides its banking and payment infrastructures to process transactions in a secure manner. Orange Money will allow producers to link their electronic money account to their producer card, in order to receive their income directly. The boss of Ecobank Côte d'Ivoire, Paul-Harry Aithnard, insisted on the need for a concrete impact “all the way to the producers”. For PUSH CEO Georges Abi Aad, digitalization is not limited to opening accounts. It must give producers a financial identity and, gradually, access to adapted services. He plans to extend the model to cotton, cashew nuts and rubber trees, or even to other countries in the sub-region.

By linking banks, mobile money and producers, PUSH is trying to make traceability a lever of confidence. It remains to be verified, in the months to come, that these agreements produce concrete results in the campaigns.