Kenyan startup VunaPay provides instant payments to smallholder farmers as soon as they deliver their produce to the agricultural societies and aggregators, and is already working with 100,000 smallholders.
Founded in 2023 by Gatwiri Njogu-Mokaya (CEO), Koya Matsuno (COO), and Ian Wambai (CTO), VunaPay partners with agricultural cooperatives to facilitate automated payment processing, record management, and transparent financial transactions.
It also offers cooperative management tools, including inventory tracking and real-time farmer data management, ensuring efficiency and trust in the agricultural value chain.
VunaPay’s main goal is to address issues around delayed payments to farmers.
Farmers usually need to wait for three-to-six months, or even over a year, to get paid for the produce they have already delivered,” Njogu-Mokaya said.
This often forces them to sell produce to middlemen at reduced prices or rely on high-interest loans. VunaPay’s instant payout system addresses this gap, integrating its technology within cooperatives to ensure fair and timely payments.
VunaPay is funded by VCs such as 54 Collective and Lifetime Ventures, and has also received some grant funding from Heifer International and MIT Solve. It has onboarded 140 cooperatives in three value chains, and registered over 110,000 farmers on its platform.
“We are also closing a partnership with a tier 1 commercial bank and exploring blended finance opportunities with DFIs to bring affordable embedded finance opportunities to our customers,” said Njogu-Mokaya.
VunaPay so far only operates in Kenya, focusing primarily on coffee, maize, and dairy cooperatives. It plans to expand into other agricultural value chains, such as tea, and aims to increase its geographical reach within Kenya and eventually to other countries in Africa. It monetises via a transaction fee for the payments facilitated to farmers.
