The challenge
Mastercard Labs had been piloting MFN — a platform connecting smallholder farmers, field agents, and agricultural buyers — for nearly two years across Tanzania and India. Despite strong institutional backing (including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), fewer than 20% of eligible farmers were engaged with any activity on the platform. Adoption was stalling, and the team needed to understand why before committing to the next product phase.
I was brought in as Senior Product Researcher to lead a 14-week research programme spanning two phases: first diagnosing the right problems, then designing tested solutions. This case covers Phase 1 — the deep-dive research that produced the problem statements guiding all subsequent design work.
e-Kilimo deployment
PCT (aggregator) piloting with 20 of 300 agents in Mbeya. Transaction spikes driven by crop seasonality. NMB as financial partner creating confusion among farmers.
e-Rythu deployment
Araku Valley, Andhra Pradesh. Tanager NGO conducting transactions on behalf of FPOs (farmer producer organisations). Adoption masked by proxy usage.
Structural low adoption
Both markets shared low literacy, poor mobile infrastructure, weak brand recognition, and an unclear value proposition for the agents most responsible for driving farmer uptake.
Labs incubation decision
Mastercard needed to determine whether MFN had product-market fit before scaling. Research findings would directly shape the go/no-go for Phase 2 prototype investment.
Research approach
The programme ran two parallel tracks — strategy and design — triangulated against each other to cut through noise and arrive at grounded problem statements rather than opinions.
Data analysis
Transactional database review. Identified adoption rates, seasonal patterns, geographic concentration, and which platform modules were actually in use.
Field interviews
27+ contextual, in-depth interviews (IDIs) across Tanzania and India — agents, aggregators, FPO CEOs, lead farmers, buyers, and channel partners.
Design audit
Audited MFN's value proposition, GTM approach, user experience, and pricing against a behavioral design framework for low-adoption digital financial services.
Insight clustering
Triangulated data and qualitative findings into clustered themes, segmented user needs, personas, journey maps, and prioritised pains and gains.
Key research insights
Six interconnected insights emerged from the fieldwork. Each one challenged a working assumption the product team held going into the research.
Value proposition gap
The concept resonated with organisations, but delivery was falling short. After two years, PCT's pilot was still limited to 20 of 350 agents — and the second payment transaction feature that aggregators needed hadn't been built.
Agents as critical — and overlooked — intermediaries
Agents were the primary touch point between farmers and MFN, yet they lacked English literacy (the app's only language), owned only feature phones, and had never received a clear articulation of why MFN benefited them personally.
Channel partner brand transfer
In Tanzania, NMB's involvement created confusion: farmers associated e-Kilimo with unfulfilled promises of loans. In India, Tanager's strong community goodwill was the main driver of the limited adoption that existed.
Brand recognition near zero
Most farmers in both markets could not name "e-Kilimo" or "e-Rythu" despite being registered. The digital scale — not the app — was the visible artifact they associated with the system. Brand exposure had never reached the 5–7 touchpoints needed for recognition.
UI changes cause drop-out
For low-literacy users who automate app workflows through repetition, any UI update — even an improved one — forces a relearn that risks drop-out. No usability testing had been conducted before shipping updates to agents in the field.
Mobile payment benefit was stakeholder-specific
Digital payments meaningfully benefit buyers and aggregators (cash security, speed). For farmers, mobile money was impractical — most lacked phones, and the nearest agent required a trip to town.
"At some stage, there are some modules and features that function well, but mostly, the one which we require at a high level — the 2nd payment registration — they didn't succeed in developing them clearly."
— PCT Aggregator Admin, Mbeya, TanzaniaAgent personas
Agents were MFN's most consequential and least understood user. I developed three distinct personas from fieldwork to give the product team a grounded picture of who was actually trying to use the app — and what was blocking them.
The Committed Agent
Active user. Uses MFN with help from family members for English navigation. Has accepted technical difficulties as normal. Represents PCT's 20 piloted agents.
Needs: simplified UI, offline functionality, local-language support
The Struggling Agent
Registered but disengaged. Understands the transaction steps but can't articulate MFN's value. Drops off after each UI update. At risk of permanent churn.
Needs: clear personal value proposition, stable UX, peer training
The Lead Farmer / FPO Agent
High community trust, volunteer capacity. Does not own a smartphone. Tanager conducts transactions on his behalf. The "on-behalf-of" model masks real adoption.
Needs: USSD/feature phone path, harvest-estimation integration
Agent user journey
The journey map traced a PCT agent in Mbeya through a single produce purchase — surfacing where the friction was structural (infrastructure, literacy) versus designed-in (app update flows, registration steps).
Problem statements for ideation
Phase 1 closed with three prioritised problem statements — one per user archetype — delivered to the Mastercard Labs team for selection and advancement into the ideation phase.
Go-to-Market segmentation
Large businesses and small buyers have fundamentally different needs and risk profiles. A segmented GTM strategy — with large buyers as adoption stimulants downstream — was missing from the current approach.
Channel partner communication
No channel partner was performing the role of consistent on-the-ground supporter. Clearer division of responsibility and structured agent-to-farmer communication cadences were needed.
Incentive model redesign
Agents bore the operational burden of the entire platform but received no clear answer to "what's in it for me?" A redesigned incentive scheme — time-bound, transparent, tied to real value — was the priority problem to solve.
Outcome & impact
The research programme delivered findings that directly shaped the Mastercard Labs product roadmap. By surfacing that low adoption was a multi-layer problem — not just a UX issue, but a GTM, incentive, and brand problem simultaneously — the team could prioritise with confidence rather than guessing.
Beyond the metrics, the most durable impact was structural: the research established usability testing as a standard gate before any MFN app release — a practice that had been entirely absent before the engagement. The agent personas and journey map became reference artefacts the product team continued to use through Phase 2 prototyping.
Fixing the fundamental baseline issues will not only help drive MFN's adoption, but allow Labs to uncover additional challenges on customer usage, product design, and go-to-market plan.
— MFN Mid-Term Research Report, Digital Disruptions, October 2019