DFA Tablet Banking for VisionFund

For many families in the rural areas of Tanzania, making a living is a struggle and farming is their only means for work and income. But even for that, they need access to microfinance services and the available options until recently were almost nonexistent.

VisionFund provides financial access to the rural poor in places that most commercial microfinance providers avoid, but such provision is expensive. To that end, VisionFund started using technology to achieve cost efficiency while providing better products and services to its clients.

In 2012 VisionFund partnered with Software Group to introduce Tablet technology, which is one of the tools that is driving change among smallholder farmers in Tanzania, DRC, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia.

Based on Software Group’s Digital Field Application (DFA) solution, Tablet banking enables digital customer onboarding, account opening and digital loan origination, savings and transactions - right at the customer doorstep.

With this technology, the MFI officer can leave the branch, go to the customer, wherever they live, and provide the service. All info is captured on the tablet including photos of the client, their fingerprints - for those who do not have an ID card, and a GPS of their location. 

Previously, preparing a loan through paperwork has taken up to 3 weeks, but through the tablet currently it takes typically one day. The paperwork process has also been more expensive for the smallholder farmers in addition to transport as they had to walk a long distance to take a bus to town.

Vision Fund is currently the only institution providing such loans to smallholder farmers and changing the lives of communities in all corners of the continent. Being the microfinance subsidiary of World Vision - a global relief, development and advocacy organisation, VisionFund is a network of 28 microfinance institutions around the world providing access to credit, savings and insurance products to the most vulnerable households.