Zowasel, a commodity market place dedicated to developing the country’s supply chain, have partnered with VBank, a digital bank in Nigeria to support farmers have access to instant and affordable credit for agribusinesses and provides huge opportunities for a value-added relationship.
Founder and CEO of Zowasel, Jerry Oche, disclosed that the partnership is to enable due diligence, utilization of existing transactional records, and physical or behavioral characteristics to boost loan approvals and reduce the incidence of non-performing loans that exist today.
Zowasel as a commodity exchange platform employs smart contracts and ensures that all transactions are shipped and payments are made after delivery without any issues in connecting thousands of crop sellers, with leading crop buyers locally and internationally.
Oche noted that farmers need working capital to take stuff out of the ground to grow their agribusinesses, explaining that they are partnering with VBank to make cash flow just a click away for qualified customers, adding that Zowasel is not a lender and does not have a lending license.
He added that Zowasel makes payments to crop sellers after every successful commodity delivery to buyers on its marketplace platform, explaining that the crop seller ships the commodity to buyers’ preferred locations and the buyer checks for both quality and quantity, then uses the Zowasel platform to transmit, received and checked all parameters before payments are released to crop sellers.
Managing Director of VBank, Gbenga Omolokun, assured that the bank will undoubtedly provide access to working capital loans to qualified crop sellers on the Zowasel platform to foster economic development across Nigeria and eliminate disruptive barriers to trade financing.
He analyzed that Zowasel’s offerings perfectly align with the drive of the bank’s for financial inclusion, adding that it’s a great opportunity to provide an additional layer of agribusiness financing which traditional banks can’t provide.
