Mastercard’s second annual Community Pass Customer Summit in Kampala, Uganda, brought together more than 90 public and private sector partners and more than 20 thought leaders dedicated to creating sustainable solutions for digital and financial inclusion across Africa and beyond.
This year’s summit featured more than 10 cutting-edge technologies and financial institutions, each showcasing their digital solutions designed to include underserved communities in the areas of agriculture, health, micro-commerce, and education. The event also featured interactive panel discussions focusing on the impact of digital technology in promoting service delivery and economic growth in remote areas. Sessions covered topics such as access to credit, last mile delivery infrastructure, enabling entrepreneurship, digital market systems in agriculture, building resilience for smallholder farmers, and innovative financing for sustainable economic and social outcomes.
As a change catalyst, the summit redefined the delivery of digital and financial services to underserved communities. Leveraging Mastercard’s core capabilities, Community Pass is a shared interoperable platform that provides digital infrastructure to both public and private sector actors to serve marginalised and often offline communities. The platform provides a commercially sustainable approach to scaling service delivery and increasing access to critical services such as agriculture, healthcare, and micro-commerce. Community Pass is growing and has already reached nearly 5 million users globally in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and India.
Speaking at the summit, Tara Nathan, executive vice president and founder of Mastercard Community Pass underscored the event’s transformative potential. “Community Pass is not just a digital platform, it’s a catalyst for change, effectively bridging the gap between underserved communities and essential services. We are excited about coming together to showcase our shared dedication to improving digital and financial access, with a focus on addressing the specific needs of our users.”
Kicking off the year with continued momentum, the Community Pass team announced three major collaborations: the launch of the Yojana card, powered by Community Pass and in collaboration with Haqdarshak Empowerment Solutions in India; a collaboration with the Shell Foundation and Co-operative Bank of Kenya to offer below-market interest rates to smallholder farmers against lending for green technology; and the launch of Equity Bank of Uganda’s financial inclusion card. These collaborations are expected to drive significant change in digital and financial inclusion for smallholder farmers and rural communities.
“Our continued partnership with Mastercard’s Community Pass has already reached 1.2 million smallholder farmers in Uganda and represents our unwavering commitment towards Uganda’s financial empowerment,” said Gerald Begumisa, managing director of Yo! Uganda.
“This year’s Community Pass Customer Summit being held in the heart of Uganda marks a major stride towards fostering financial resilience, transforming lives, and amplifying prosperity across our nation.”
Daniel Huba, vice president, Community Pass Market Development, sub-Saharan Africa at Mastercard, emphasised the importance of the platform on the continent. “Community Pass goes beyond connectivity; it’s about fostering sustainable economic opportunities and welcoming the digitally excluded into the formal digital economy. This year’s summit is an important step towards this vision, aiming to make digital tools and solutions universally accessible in Africa’s evolving economy.”
Through the Community Pass solution, Mastercard is enabling rural and marginalised communities, many of whom lack digitised records, identification documents and/or connectivity, to digitally access a network of offline services. For example, Community Pass enables smallholder farmers to increase their productivity and command higher prices by digitally connecting them to an ecosystem of actors serving the agricultural sector, including product buyers, input providers, financial institutions and more.
Mastercard is a global payments company whose mission is to connect and power an inclusive digital economy that works for everyone, everywhere, by making transactions safe, simple, smart and accessible. Through secure data and networks, partnerships and passion, the company’s innovations and solutions help individuals, financial institutions, governments, and businesses unlock their greatest potential.
