M-CASH CEO KEY NOTE ADDRESS - AWARD CELEBRATION

5th July 2024, Golden Tulip Canaan Kampala, Uganda

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We are extremely grateful to God for the international prestigious PayTech Award 2024.

I would like in a special way to welcome you our distinguished guests who have come to celebrate with us the international prestigious PayTech Award 2024 for our outstanding contribution to the Economic Mobility in Payments. At such a short notice. This abrupt celebration is motivated by an English saying that you “strike while the Iron is still hot.”

On the 28th June 2024, M-Cash Uganda Limited was recognized at an international level for outstanding contribution to the Economic Mobility in Payments, for building a solution that brings financial inclusion as well as financial services to the last mile.

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"I believe that having a bank account should be a human right for all."

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Bringing services to the last mile has been our vision and we have consistently been pursuing this vision. We are the pioneers of financial inclusion as far back as 2011 with Housing Finance Bank, and our business model is what has today become agency banking.

We would like to thank DFCU Bank for giving us an opportunity to provide an end to end agency banking technology including agent network management.

Over time M-Cash has built a myriad of enterprise solutions among which are; eKYC, Fuel card, Value Added Services which include Utility payments, TV, school fees and pocket money which is a common product in the market today.

With the stiff competition in the space of mobile money and internet banking, we decided to concentrate our innovation around digitization in the Agriculture sector with a consistent vision of banking the unbanked and underserved population.

Having been in innovation and development for 30 years and knowing the transformative power of technology, I consistently seek to bridge the gap of financial divide through M-Cash.

I believe that having a bank account should be a human right for all. It is unfair to delay payment for farmers, especially in the Agricultural sector, because banking services are far from where they operate. Imagine a farmer who supplies milk daily and has to wait for 3 weeks to be paid yet technology provides a solution for real time payments. This is what M-Cash is fronting as we contribute to poverty eradication, and transform lives of farmers in Uganda.

The E-Voucher solution is the most transformative solution to empower farmers get reliable inputs and provide more output as clearly demonstrated by the Agriculture Cluster Development Project. It provides information, and critical data for decision making to set sound developmental policies for the country.

I would like to congratulate Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries, especially the Permanent Secretary, Major General David Kasura Kyomukama for spearheading this solution. This award is not only for M-Cash, indeed, it is an international recognition of M-Cash innovation but also importantly successful collaboration and partnership with MAAIF.

M-Cash would not have received this award without prior recognition by MAAIF / World Bank for being the best financial inclusion innovator during the Agriculture Disruptive Challenge in 2019 which led to being contracted to implement the E-Voucher system to the Agriculture Cluster Development Project.

On technology, MAAIF contract gave us an opportunity to put together innovations such as the wallet; to connect farmers and traders, eKYC; to profile farmers and traders, and bulk payments; to disburse funds to farmers in real time. All this could not happen without further innovation of eCommerce platform to enable farmers to order inputs. All these were done through different channels through integrations with other partners such as NITA-U, MTN Mobile Money, Airtel and most importantly Centenary Bank that provided banking services. This project was completed in a record time of 18 months.

I would like to sincerely thank Centenary Bank for providing seamless banking services. Airtel and MTN collaborated in reducing collection fees for farmers.

We cannot have enough words to thank Ministry of Finance, World Bank and Ministry of Agriculture for the exceptional support they gave us while implementing the project, and their tireless effort to promote the E-Voucher.

In a special way, we are grateful to Operation Wealth Creation for working with us to serve farmers since 2014 to date.

To the banks, Housing Finance, Stanbic and DFCU we thank you for the journey we have walked with you over the years to achieve business growth.

To our prospective bank partners KCB, Equity and ABSA we pray for a successful partnership to implement our new innovations.

Lastly, I would like to thank my team comprising of committed young people who do not fear the unknown and always aspiring for growth and excellence. This award is dedicated to you guys, you have made it all.

I Thank You.