BOB Financial Solutions Limited (BFSL), a wholly owned subsidiary of Bank of Baroda (BoB), and CreditAI Fintech Pvt. Ltd. (CAI), a Singapore and Bengaluru-based farmer digitisation and credit scoring company, on Thursday launched Unnati, a credit card exclusively for farmers to purchase farm inputs.
The card has been launched as a contactless offering on the Visa network
The Unnati credit card would empower farmers to avail agricultural inputs in time and at any-time during the cultivation cycle. Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) would further help farmers understand and avail the benefits of this card. The Unnati credit card would work in a ‘closed-loop system’ with an ‘end-use monitoring’ feature to both enable and trace agricultural credit to its last mile.
CreditAI’s proprietary mobile app and inputs shop management system would ensure that the end use of credit is primarily for purchase of inputs at FPO owned input sales shops, said Sangram Nayaka, CEO, CreditAI
The Unnati Credit Card is uniquely designed to allow farmers to use credit on rotation basis so that it avoids delays in renewals. Initially, a base credit limit will be provided and over time, once the farmer’s credit profile improves with more transactions and repayments, the limit could be increased based on the farmer’s personal credit score and their actual cultivation needs.
The Unnati credit card would be launched in different States.
Shailendra Singh, MD & CEO, BFSL said the Unnati credit card would bring seamless access to credit to farmers, as per the requirements of their cultivation cycles. To ensure that the farmers, many of whom would be new to digital or cashless credit, are protected from misuse of their credit card, Unnati will run as a closed loop programme and the card can only be used for agriculture related inputs from the respective FPO network.
Neeraj Kumar Verma, Chief General Manager, NABARD,, Bengaluru, spoke about the utility of the card for farmers.
The Centre has approved and launched the “Formation and Promotion of 10,000 FPOs to form and promote 10,000 new FPOs till 2027-28 with a total budgetary outlay of ₹6,865 crore.
