Now Vodafone's M-Pesa mobile wallets to be used to pay artisans

NEW DELHI: Vodafone India, India’s second largest telco, Tuesday entered into a partnership with rug manufacturer, Jaipur Rugs, to facilitate payments to artisans via M-Pesa mobile wallets.

Jaipur Rugs has close to 40,000+ home-based artisans spread across 600 villages. Around 80% of these artisans are women who live in disadvantaged communities of rural India and don’t have access to the basic financial services.

“We see a natural synergy between Vodafone M-Pesa and Jaipur Rugs to offer financial services to the unbanked and the under-banked community of India,” Amit Bedi, Business Head, Rajasthan Circle - Vodafone India, said in a statement.

The partnership is aimed at driving financial inclusion further which will improve the lives of many artisans, most of whom are women, the telco said in a statement.

The strategic partnership between Vodafone M-Pesa and Jaipur Rugs will address this latent need of the artisans and will provide them with on-time payments facility and enable them to en-cash wages from their nearest agent through M-Pesa.

The company said that the tie-up will also help these artisans to help scale up the business by leveraging its foothold in difficult-to-access rural markets and overcoming other operational challenges faced by this industry.