By Murimi Gitari, July 28, 2026, A new partnership between Heifer International Kenya, Mastercard, KCB Foundation and KCB Bank Kenya is set to bring tens of thousands of smallholder dairy farmers into the digital economy, tackling long-standing cash-based payment problems that have kept many out of the formal financial system.
The four organizations have launched the Farmer Visibility Project, a nine-month pilot that aims to digitize transactions and expand access to financial services and markets for 30,000 smallholder dairy farmers across Kenya. Organizers say the initiative could scale nationally if the pilot succeeds.
Kenya’s dairy sector remains heavily dependent on cash transactions and informal record-keeping, a gap that has made it difficult for farmers to build the financial track records lenders typically require for credit, input financing, and other services. Delayed milk payments and cash-flow strain within cooperative structures have also pushed some farmers toward informal sales channels, which in turn limits transparency and shuts them out of formal markets.
The Farmer Visibility Project is designed to address that gap directly. Farmers and their cooperatives will get support with digital and financial literacy, registration, opening bank accounts, and adopting digital payment tools. By digitizing milk deliveries, payments, savings and input purchases, the partners hope to create clearer transaction records — data that could eventually help banks and other institutions design financial products better suited to the seasonal cash-flow patterns of dairy farming.
Heifer International Kenya, which is leading implementation of the project, framed the effort as part of a broader push to recognize smallholder farmers as entrepreneurs in their own right.
“Smallholder farmers are entrepreneurs. They are business owners, suppliers, employers and investors in their communities. Yet many remain invisible to the financial systems and markets that could help them grow,” said Wairimu Munyinyi-Wahome, Country Director of Heifer International Kenya, describing the project as an effort to give farmers greater control over their own data while connecting them to finance and markets.
Mastercard is funding Heifer International as the lead implementer, with KCB Foundation and KCB Bank Kenya participating as subgrantees.
Mastercard is providing the digital backbone of the project, deploying its Farm Pass capabilities and Community Pass platform to enable payments and credit. The technology will underpin digital farmer profiles, transaction tracking and value chain linkages, including in rural areas where digital infrastructure is limited.
Working alongside KCB and other players in the value chain, the platform will also support card issuance and digital payments for input purchases — building the kind of transaction history that can strengthen farmers’ standing with formal lenders over time.
“Through our investment and the deployment of our Farm Pass solution, farmer transactions will be digitized, their traceability strengthened, and more seamless access to payments and financial services enabled,” said Shehryar Ali, Mastercard’s senior vice president and country manager for East Africa and Indian Ocean Islands. He added that the goal extends beyond financial inclusion to building longer-term resilience for dairy farmers.
KCB Foundation will handle much of the on-the-ground implementation — farmer engagement, strengthening cooperative systems, capacity building, financial literacy training, and overall monitoring and coordination. KCB Bank Kenya, meanwhile, will manage the banking side: opening accounts, issuing farmer payment cards, rolling out digital payment tools, and supporting the agents and merchants who accept them.
“Sustainable community development begins by creating opportunities that enable people to participate meaningfully in the economy,” said KCB Foundation Managing Director Mendi Njonjo at the project’s launch. She said the initiative combines digital innovation, financial inclusion and agricultural support to help farmers build more resilient businesses and increase household incomes.
Over the coming nine months, the partners will track progress toward reaching the 30,000-farmer target. Lessons from the pilot are expected to inform broader efforts to modernize dairy payments, strengthen cooperative systems, and expand digital financial services across Kenya’s dairy sector more widely.
