Agriculture employs hundreds of millions of people across Asia-Pacific and contributes meaningfully to the GDP of every major economy in the region — yet it remains one of the most underserved sectors in financial services. Smallholder farmers in India and Indonesia operate with minimal access to formal credit. Thai and Vietnamese farmers pay cash for inputs, receive cash for outputs, and interact with a financial system that was not designed with their seasonal cash flows or value chain complexity in mind. Australia's commercialized farming sector, by contrast, has high credit penetration but an almost complete absence of agriculture-specific payment products. For a global payments network seeking to develop a coherent, evidence-based agriculture strategy across Asia-Pacific, a market-by-market analysis — grounded in both primary farmer surveys and detailed payment flow modeling — was the essential foundation.

The Challenge

The opportunity in agricultural payments is real but deeply heterogeneous across markets. India's rice, wheat, sugarcane, and cotton value chains operate through a complex web of mandis, cooperatives, middlemen, and government minimum support prices. Indonesia's palm oil, rubber, cocoa, and rice sectors involve tightly integrated export-oriented supply chains alongside fragmented smallholder production. Thailand and Vietnam have high agritech adoption rates but underdeveloped agricultural finance ecosystems. Australia is export-driven and technologically sophisticated but lacks agriculture-specific card or credit products despite high card penetration. A network seeking to identify actionable commercial entry points — whether through cooperative partnerships, agritech marketplace integrations, card-linked credit products aligned to crop production cycles, or cross-border payment solutions for export-oriented farmers — needed granular, comparable analysis across all five markets before it could prioritize.

The Approach

KoreFusion produced five comprehensive country data books covering India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Australia — each spanning seven structured analytical sections: a data book overview and methodology; industry overview and value chain analysis; country agricultural payments and lending ecosystem; key player profiles supporting the agri value chain; sizing and identification of key payment flows by crop and livestock category; highlights from a primary SME farmer survey (for the four developing-market countries); and preliminary go-to-market considerations for the network. The payment flow sizing was built from the ground up — crop by crop, with production cycle and unit economics modeled for the two to four most significant crops or livestock categories per country (rice, wheat, sugarcane, cotton in India; palm oil, rubber, cocoa, rice in Indonesia; rice, rubber, sugarcane, cassava in Thailand; rice, rubber, coffee, pepper in Vietnam; wheat, canola, cotton, barley in Australia). Each flow was sized from farmgate through input procurement, with intermediate consumption, gross output, and cardable expense shares estimated from official agricultural statistics, central bank data, and primary research. The primary farmer surveys — covering hundreds of smallholder and commercial farmers across all four developing markets — assessed card ownership and usage frequency, mobile banking adoption, informal credit reliance, AgriTech adoption rates, insurance enrollment, and product concept value proposition testing (including a dedicated agri card CVP module in Thailand). The go-to-market analysis identified four to five priority commercial entry points per country, with named partnership candidates and Visa product applicability assessments for each.

The Outcome

The five data books gave the network's Asia-Pacific agriculture strategy team a structured, comparable, and deeply evidenced view of payment dynamics across the region's most important agricultural economies. Key findings varied meaningfully by market: in India, the formal payment penetration of intermediate consumption flows was higher than expected (72% of rice farmers' inputs sourced formally), creating a specific opportunity in cooperative and agribusiness card acceptance; in Indonesia, the dominance of tightly integrated export supply chains (particularly palm oil and cocoa) pointed toward embedded payment solutions within agribusiness procurement platforms; in Thailand, 87% of surveyed farmers already held a card but used it infrequently for agricultural purchases, with cashback and simplified credit features identified as the most compelling conversion drivers; in Vietnam, high agritech adoption (93%) and a growing e-commerce trend created a channel for digital payment integration; and in Australia, the near-total absence of agriculture-specific card products alongside high general card infrastructure represented a clear white space for a LAC-style agro-card product adapted for the Australian context. The research established a practical, analytically grounded foundation for the network's agriculture go-to-market strategy across Asia-Pacific.