NO CASH? NO PROBLEM
How a digital payments tool helps an arepa maker in rural Colombia level up her business.
Angie is a small business owner in a village nestled in the hilly province of Boyacá, near Colombia’s capital of Bogotá.
Every day after dropping her children off to school, Angie begins her work making arepas boyacenses, stuffed cornmeal pancakes traditional to the region, to sell in her shop. To Angie, making arepas is not just her livelihood, it’s a part of her heritage.
“The handling of the dough is totally ancestral. The process is all by hand. The only modern thing we use is the stove,” Angie said.
Angie buys her ingredients from local farmers and producers to make the arepas she sells to members of her community and tourists who pass through this important agricultural and tourism hub.
In recent years, Angie noticed tourists were looking for an electronic payment option for her arepas as opposed to paying in cash—but Angie did not offer any, as she wasn’t familiar with digital payment options at the time.
“They started to ask me for arepas and asked: ‘Can you receive digital money?’ And I told them: ‘No, I don't have digital accounts.’ ”
Colombia has made considerable gains in access to finance, but they’re not evenly distributed across the country. In rural areas, only 55% of adults have access to financial services, owing to decades of conflict, strife, and other setbacks. Digital financial services have the potential to close this gap.
Through mobile payments, digital banking and other products, small business owners like Angie can better serve their customers and simplify their business transactions, removing the need to travel to physical banks and other financial services.
TRANSFORMED BY TRANSFIYA
For Angie, her business has been transformed by Transfiya, a new tool to facilitate electronic transactions that was developed by a partnership between USAID, the digital finance company ACH-Colombia, and several of its member banks.
The Transfiya app allows people to connect their bank accounts or digital wallets to send and receive payments.
One day, representatives from Transfiya stopped by Angie’s shop to demonstrate how their new tool could support her business and customers—and she was on board.
“They told me about Transfiya, and they taught me, and I thought it was great,” Angie said.
Following this encounter, Angie started using the platform to accept electronic payments from her customers. Over time, as Angie shared the benefits of the platform with those around her, she even started paying for the ingredients for her arepas through Transfiya, as her suppliers also joined the platform.
“It has helped us to grow because we can receive payments from buyers and also handle the money for the suppliers through the Transfiya platform,” Angie said.
Since she started using Transfiya, Angie has seen her business expand dramatically; but for her, what’s most valuable are the benefits for her family: less time traveling to banks and managing her finances means more quality time together.
“Now that I can transfer money directly from my home, I have more time to spend with my children.”
Angie's story illustrates how digital financial services through real-time, electronic payment platforms like Transfiya have the potential to help small businesses across Colombia streamline business transactions, provide better customer service, and generate more income.
In rural and remote areas where access to finance is still a challenge, due to distance and lack of infrastructure, these platforms provide a low-cost opportunity for business owners to adjust the way they operate and drive economic growth and resilience for their communities.
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ABOUT THIS STORY
The USAID Rural Finance Initiative, implemented by Chemonics, partnered with Colombia’s Central Bank and the digital finance company ACH-Colombia to develop the Transifiya digital payment tool, which was launched in 2019.
The tool has helped transform small businesses, like Angie’s, in rural communities in Latin America and the Caribbean and spur greater economic growth across the region. Since its launch, Transfiya had processed over 10 million transactions worth over $1.255 billion Colombian pesos (about $316 million), or an average transaction size of $25 - $65, as of February 2022.
In 2022 alone, Transfiya processed 2.45 million transactions per month.
This project was selected as a winner of the 2022 USAID Digital Development Awards.
Footnotes
Photos by Nathalia Angarita / Páramo Films for USAID