In April 2025, digital wage payments were introduced at Makandi Tea Estate. This marked a significant change for workers like Selena John, a 58-year-old mother of six.
“Before, I often relied on high-interest loans just to meet basic needs,” she recalls. “Now, I can access safer loans through mobile money and manage my finances better.”
Selena can now pay school fees for her child, something she previously struggled to do.
“Whether I am at home or away, I can still receive money instantly,” she says. “This has given me more control and peace of mind.”
Across Malawi’s tea sector, stories like Selena’s are becoming more common. Receiving wages on mobile phones is helping workers better plan, manage, and retain their income.
What began as a change in how wages are delivered is putting real financial control into workers’ hands.
A cash-based model reaching its limits
In Malawi, tea is one of the pillars of the agricultural economy and the country’s second-largest foreign exchange earner after tobacco. Nine estates operate processing factories for export, while around 27 000 smallholder farmers supply green leaf, according to the National Smallholder Tea Growers Association as of December 2025. In total, close to 60 000 people depend on the sector for their livelihoods.
For decades workers were paid in cash
Each year, tea estates distributed more than $40 million in physical wage payments. Payroll teams counted banknotes late into the night, sealed them in envelopes, and distributed them on payday. Some workers travelled long distances to collect their wages, often waiting in line for hours. For estates, managing such large volumes of cash involved high costs and significant security risks.
On payday, cash payments often attracted informal lenders, commonly referred to as loan sharks and known locally as katapila. Offering short-term loans at high interest rates, they positioned themselves near estates as workers collected their wages. As a result, many workers lost part of their wages before reaching home.
A sector-wide responsible digital payment-led transformation
This system is now undergoing a significant transformation.
In 2025, the Tea Association of Malawi, with support from the Better Than Cash Alliance, launched an initiative to responsibly digitise wage payments across the sector, in partnership with financial institutions and mobile network operators, including the National Bank of Malawi (NBM) plc, TNM plc, and Airtel Malawi plc.
Early results suggest that this model can work at scale. Since April 2025, more than $4.5 million in wages has been paid digitally across participating estates, reaching over 11 665 workers and farmers to date. Two estates have already fully transitioned to digital payments, with a third preparing to follow.
This progress has been made possible through strong sector-wide coordination. By bringing together estates, smallholder farmers, financial service providers, and mobile operators, the initiative has reached the scale needed to attract investment and ensure sustainability.
The Tea Association of Malawi has played a critical role in driving and coordinating this transformation. Training sessions have been conducted in local languages to ensure accessibility and understanding, while local champions within estates have helped build trust and support workers throughout the transition.
Building trust and unlocking tangible benefits
Introducing digital payments in rural communities requires more than technology; it requires trust.
At first, resistance was common. Some workers were concerned about transaction fees; others lacked phones or the necessary documentation to open accounts. Many withdrew their full wages immediately, simply to confirm that the system worked.
Over time, these barriers have started to be addressed. Financial service providers are innovating, broadening their product offerings, and adjusting costs, while registration systems have improved and telecom operators have strengthened network infrastructure in key areas. As confidence has grown, transacting habits have begun to shift.
Today, around 70 percent of workers keep part of their wages in digital form.
The impact is particularly visible on payday. Workers no longer need to travel or queue to collect their wages in cash; they can access their money wherever and whenever they need to.
Beyond convenience, digital payments are opening access to safer financial services. Since the programme began, more than 38 percent of workers paid digitally have accessed formal loans, with repayment rates close to 99 percent.
Digitisation has also brought governance benefits. Payroll systems have become more reliable, worker records have been strengthened, and identity verification has improved. In some cases, the process has even revealed outdated land records, such as farms still registered in the names of deceased relatives, highlighting broader structural challenges.
Women at the heart of the transformation
A distinctive feature of Malawi’s tea sector lies in land ownership patterns. In parts of southern Malawi, land is inherited through matrilineal traditions, meaning farms are often owned and passed down through women.
As a result, 65 percent of the smallholder farmers supplying tea estates who receive digital payments are women, who play a central role in agricultural production and decision-making.
This reality shapes how the digitisation programme is implemented. Training sessions frequently engage large numbers of women, strengthening their access to financial tools and services.
By enabling greater control over income and access to digital financial services, this transition is contributing to women’s economic empowerment and broader financial inclusion.
A model that can scale across agricultural sectors
The tea sector provides a valuable testing ground to unlock economic opportunities for workers and farmers, while key challenges are being addressed. Workers are dispersed across rural estates, farms are often small, connectivity can be inconsistent and financial ecosystems are weak or non-existent.
Yet within this context our experience shows that digital wage systems can work, if they are anchored on the Principles of Responsible Digital Payments. Several lessons stand out. First, sector coordination is essential to achieving scale. Second, behaviour/habitual change requires time, trust supported by strong and accessible recourse mechanisms, which have played a key role in building user confidence and increasing adoption. Third, digital payments must be supported by a broader ecosystem—including merchants, agents, and financial services—to succeed.
Building on these experiences, several lessons can be applied to other agricultural value chains in Malawi, such as sugarcane, rice, cassava and other export crops, which remain cash dependent.
But ultimately, this transformation is about more than how workers are paid. It is about addressing everyday challenges, by building systems that are safer, more transparent, and more inclusive.
About the authors: Chinangwa is Tea Association of Malawi CEO while Kieru is a digital payment specialist—Better Than Cash Alliance
