Abia LIFE-ND provides POS, ATM cards to farmers
By Leonard Okachie
The Project Coordinating Office of Abia Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprises, Niger Delta, (LIFE-ND) in collaboration with Parkway Projects Ltd., has provided Point-of-Sale terminal (POS) and Automated Teller Machines(ATM) modems for benefiting farmers.
The Financial Inclusion Specialist for LIFE-ND, Mr Lucky Ubani, said in Umuahia on Thursday that 20 people received POS while 167 of them got Parkway wallet cards.
According to him, the POS are for beneficiaries in the cluster and they are expected to unite as well as use them to generate income for their enterprises.
He said that the essence was to provide financial inclusion to the beneficiaries, otherwise referred to as incubatees.
Ubani said that the project was expected to link about 2,500 beneficiaries in financial inclusion lock frame throughout its lifespan in six operating states in the Niger Delta.
He also said that the farmers were expected to increase their remittances, be able to sell their products and do transfers without any constraint.
Ubani further said that the POS would help beneficiaries to save more money in their digital wallets and increase income since it would yield more interest for them.
The Abia LIFE-ND Project Coordinator, Dr Uchenna Onyeizu, said that the financial inclusion was an engagement with the beneficiaries to ensure sustainability with them.
According to him, the financial inclusion is looking at how we can leverage on the financial opportunities within our environment so that they can benefit from it.
He said: “As a project, we have been able to engage a lot of private and public financial institutions, to see how they can leverage on their services across board.
“We are providing POS machines so that they can do some micro businesses within their communities using the facilities.
“It is a sort of loan facility and it is for some of our selected beneficiaries whom we have already empowered in the past”.
Speaking on the innovation, Mr Dire Chidi, Head of Agency and Financial Inclusion, Parkway, said that the farmers were empowered to transact using the digital financial product.
He said that with the Parkway wallet cards distributed to beneficiaries, they would send and receive money from anybody in Nigeria within the detail narrative.
Dire said that Parkway was being licenced by the Central Bank of Nigeria, adding that the digital cards would help the farmers to save and earn interest in any of their savings.
He added that farmers had the card tied to their accounts, which allowed them to use any available channels such as ATM and PoS to withdraw money.
One of the beneficiary, Ms Joyce Ojimadu, an oil palm processor, expressed gratitude to LIFE-ND for the opportunity, saying, “We now have account and ATM card for withdrawal and other transactions, even at a lesser charge.”
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that LIFE-ND is being funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development. (NAN)
