PaygOps for Agri: Helping Create Seamless Supplier-Farmer Links
The distribution of agricultural products and services in Sub-Saharan Africa poses significant challenges in ensuring accessibility, affordability, and efficiency across the value chain. On one end, agritech suppliers must navigate through limited resources and logistical barriers to reach and serve remote farming communities. On the other, smallholder farmers—the backbone of the region’s agricultural ecosystem—struggle to secure quality inputs at fair prices, access reliable markets for their produce, and cope, among others, with unpredictable rainfall patterns that threaten their yields.
So, how can these challenges be addressed?
Digital solutions play a transformative role in addressing these systemic challenges. From Mobile Money (MoMo) payment systems to data-driven credit scoring and supply chain optimisation, IT innovations can empower both suppliers and smallholder farmers by streamlining operations and fostering financial inclusion. With such technologies, agribusinesses can build more efficient distribution networks, while farmers gain better access to credit, inputs and markets, generating sustainable growth for all stakeholders.
This is where a specialised software platform like PaygOps comes in. Designed to meet the unique needs of micro-lenders across essential industries, including agriculture, PaygOps offers a series of comprehensive microservices and features for flexible micro-credit management, customer profiling, inventory tracking, after-sales support, and more, enabling agribusinesses to scale while better serving farmers.
That being said, let’s explore how PaygOps’ key features can support agri suppliers and the farming communities they support in navigating challenges across the value chain.
Increasing Market Access with Offtaking Functionality
One of the biggest challenges for smallholder farmers is securing a guaranteed market for their produce, while distributors struggle with sourcing quality agricultural products in a reliable and efficient manner. The PaygOps Offtaking Feature helps overcome this barrier by enabling agribusinesses to purchase or secure future harvests from farmers, ensuring them a stable income while optimising supply chains for distributors. This feature allows suppliers to digitally track, manage, and finance agricultural offtaking agreements, reducing uncertainties for both parties. Additionally, it offers farmers the flexibility to obtain agricultural inputs on credit and repay the loan with their produce, creating a more inclusive and sustainable financing model.
💡 How Agri Suppliers Benefit from this Solution... |
Imagine a distributor that is facing inconsistent supply and quality issues. On the other end, there’s a group of farmers who lack the financial security to invest in better inputs due to uncertainty about selling their harvest. With PaygOps’ Offtaking Feature, this distributor can easily formalise agreements with those farmers, guaranteeing a market for their crops. This assurance enables farmers to access pre-financing for quality seeds and fertilisers, leading to higher yields and improved livelihoods, while the distributor secures a steady, traceable supply of produce. |
Smooth, Accurate and Efficient Surface Mapping
Calculating crop size and potential yield can be challenging for both farmers and agribusinesses. Traditional estimation methods are often inaccurate, leading to inefficiencies in input distribution, credit allocation, and offtaking agreements. PaygOps’ Surface Mapping feature addresses this issue by leveraging GPS technology to precisely measure cultivated land. This data-driven approach helps distributors and micro-lenders make informed decisions, optimise resource allocation, and tailor financing or input distribution to farmers’ actual needs.
💡 How Agri Suppliers Benefit from this Solution... |
For example, a distributor providing fertilisers and seeds to farmers might struggle to estimate the land size of their clients, resulting in an over -or under- supply of inputs. At the same time, a farmer seeking a loan for agricultural investment may face challenges securing fair financing due to unreliable land assessment. With PaygOps’ Surface Mapping, the distributor can accurately map crop size, gain reliable data and ensure optimised input distribution, while farmers have access to fully tailored credit solutions. This leads to improved productivity, reduced waste, and better financial inclusion for farmers. |
Flexible Offering Arrangement with Add-ons and Bundles
In many cases, agribusinesses need to offer complementary products and services alongside their core offerings, but rigid systems, or the lack thereof, can make bundling and customisation somewhat challenging. The PaygOps Add-Ons Feature provides a flexible way to structure product and service offerings, enabling distributors to bundle inputs, financing options, and after-sales services according to farmers’ needs. This way, agribusinesses can tailor their value propositions, improve customer engagement, and create additional revenue streams while enhancing the overall experience for the farmers.
💡 How Agri Suppliers Benefit from this Solution... |
For instance, an agri supplier selling irrigation equipment wants to offer seeds and maintenance services on top of it, but struggles to integrate these options into a single package/loan. With PaygOps’ Add-Ons Feature, the distributor can bundle irrigation kits with seeds and maintenance services within the same flexible repayment plan, giving farmers a complete solution without upfront financial strain. This approach improves accessibility, boosts customer satisfaction, and strengthens long-term business. |
Streamline Field Operations with Custom User Journeys & Mobile Solutions
Agritech service providers generally rely on agents, either on the field, in dedicated shops (dukas) or even in call centres, to onboard farmers, manage their loans, and track input deliveries. When lacking the right technology, these operations can be slow, inefficient and prone to error.
⚙️No-Code Customised User Journeys
Field operations require structured workflows that guide agents through key processes such as farmer onboarding, loan registration, offtaking, product delivery or pickup. The PaygOps User Journey Editor enables agribusinesses to design step-by-step workflows tailored to their operational needs, and bring these crucial processes to the front and center of PaygOps, streamlining data collection and service delivery, while ultimately reducing errors and improving operational efficiency. Watch this powerful feature in action here.
📱Tailored Mobile Solutions
To support agri suppliers operating in remote areas, the PaygOps Mobile App offers the same comprehensive functionality as the desktop interface, enabling field agents to manage contracts, register farmers, deliver or pick up products, and much more—all from their mobile devices. A key advantage of the PaygOps Mobile App is its offline functionality, which allows agents to continue working without an internet connection. All data is stored locally and automatically syncs once the agent regains network access, ensuring uninterrupted service in rural areas.
But there’s even more! For companies who require simplified, tailored apps, our recently launched Custom App Designer provides the flexibility to build bespoke mobile apps tailored to their specific operations. Building on the User Journeys feature, the Custom App Designer allows for creating purpose-built applications that focus only on key tasks, ensuring an intuitive and optimised experience for field agents. This way agribusinesses can leverage digital solutions that align with their workflows and operational priorities.
💡 How Agri Suppliers Benefit from this Solution... |
Let’s say an agritech distributor with a wide network of field agents needs an efficient way to onboard farmers, register loan agreements, carry out offtaking agreements and track agri input deliveries. Firstly, by using PaygOps’ User Journeys, they create structured workflows that guide agents through each step, aiming to ensure accurate data collection and seamless service delivery. For maximum flexibility, they equip field managers with the PaygOps Mobile App, allowing them to oversee broader operations and work offline when needed. Meanwhile, field agents receive a custom-built app designed through the Custom App Designer, containing only the features relevant to their tasks (farmer registration, loan registration, offtaking and input delivery). This powerful combination enhances efficiency, reduces operational complexity, and ensures agents have the right tools for their specific roles. |
Simplify Multilocation Stock Levels and Inventory Management
For agribusinesses, efficiently managing inventory across multiple locations, such as warehouses, hubs and retail shops (dukas), is crucial to ensure product availability and prevent stockouts. Unlike other industries (i.e. clean energy and clean cooking) dealing with serialised products, agri suppliers often work with bulk goods, making real-time stock tracking even more essential. The PaygOps Stock Count Inventory feature provides suppliers with a seamless way to monitor stock levels across different locations in real time. Every time an agent delivers agri products or a customer makes a purchase that is registered through PaygOps, the system automatically updates inventory records. This not only enhances visibility and accuracy, but also eliminates the need for manual stock reconciliation, saving a great amount of time and reducing errors.
Monitor Sales and Optimise Agents' Performance with Custom User Management
Given the importance of effectively managing field agents, PaygOps provides a fully adaptable user management system tailored to essential service providers’ needs. With features like the Lead Generator, businesses can register both internal and external sales agents, monitor their performance, and seamlessly manage commission-based payments through expense tracking.
Moreover, agribusinesses can control user access levels, assigning specific roles and permissions across different hierarchical structures (i.e. state, region, county, hub, etc). For example, a village manager can be granted full admin access, while a field agent may only have access to a specific region. This ensures a well-structured, secure, and efficient team management system, allowing businesses to oversee operations with clarity and precision.
In Conclusion: PaygOps Empowers Agribusinesses with Scalable and Customisable Solutions
These PaygOps features are thoughtfully designed to help agribusinesses navigate the most common challenges in the sector while strengthening the supplier-farmer relationship. By automating processes, streamlining operations and enabling faster scalability, these tools empower agritech distributors to operate more efficiently. Tested and implemented by major clients in the industry, they’ve reported significant efficiency gains, proving the value of PaygOps technology in real-world agricultural supply chains.
For agribusinesses with more advanced needs, PaygOps offers Custom Workflows and Analytics as premium services, providing deeper customisation and seamless integration with existing IT ecosystems. Custom Workflows enable PaygOps to integrate with virtually any third-party application (i.e. QuickBooks, Inventory management systems, Credit Scoring models, and other tools) ensuring a smooth data flow across platforms. Meanwhile, Analytics empowers users to design and display highly customisable dashboards, allowing them to track performance, monitor trends, and make data-driven decisions at every organisational level.
📢 Interested in discussing how our flexible features can drive efficiency and growth for your agribusiness operations? Get in touch with us and book a demo today!
About PaygOps:
Solaris Offgrid’s flagship fintech software, PaygOps, enables credit to be provided to the bottom of the pyramid for essential products like solar home systems, agri-inputs, water pumps. The end customers pay incrementally via mobile money under a PAYGO model. PaygOps provides the software infrastructure to manage the contracts, payments and related communication for the local retailers of such products. Our affordable modular and interoperable solution connects energy and payment methods (Pay-as-you-go, mobile money) to a suite of enterprise applications that allows the smooth management of lease financing and field operations, while providing key financial data and metrics to investors.