Emerging ecosystems for DFS use among smallholder farmers in Laos and Cambodia

Authors: Isaac Lyne, Erin Taylor, Heather Horst, SPOANN Vin, Salika Onsy, SAN Vibol, THATH Rido, Daovy Kongmanila and Vilaythieng Sisouvong

In January and February 2026, our team returned to Cambodia and Laos to conduct the third and final round of qualitative data collection which included interviews and focus groups. This time, we visited rural communities and interviewed active users of digital financial services (DFS) in order to understand how and why ‘early adopter’ farmers were using the services and the extent to which cash payments continue to be used. We dove deeper into how smallholder farmers use technologies, especially DFS, in their farming activities. 

In this focused period of research with DFS users, we found that DFS is used more in rural locations than in peri-urban areas. When farmers owned more land and had farming infrastructure such as irrigation, they reported that DFS was useful in different farming practices. For example, access to DFS and QR codes for payments was starting to change how farmers were paid, their sense of safety and convenience, their capacity to initiate or improve an off-farm business and their receipt of remittances. It also made it easier for farmers to buy higher quality inputs at a better price from sellers located far away. 

This difference between peri-urban and rural locations shaped our field site choice. Our research team intended to visit villages in Kampong Cham Province, but our team’s preliminary scoping suggested it would be too difficult to locate enough DFS users to interview. Given this constraint, we decided to conduct research in two rural villages in Battambang Province, which is an agricultural hub in northwest Cambodia, and where we could confirm in advance the presence of DFS users. 

With greater use by some farmers, we also recognised potential for inequalities to be widened. Some people found apps or wallets provided by banks like ABA and ACLEDA to be liberating because they provided farmers more opportunities to make and receive payments and store money, but this was not the case for all farmers. For example, other farmers who only had a microfinance institution app on their phone used DFS apps almost entirely for repaying loans taken out in situations of distress. In one case, a woman said she looked forward to the day her loan was paid off and she no longer had to have the app on her phone at all.  

In Laos, we visited villages in Savannakhet Province, where we found that the ACLEDA app had gained in popularity alongside BCEL One Pay due to the presence of a local ACLEDA bank branch. The Laos Development Bank also had a presence. In this province we found considerable optimism among both rice and rubber farmers, especially amongst younger farmers. The use of an app seems to have been initially driven by families with multiple income sources, but this has, in turn, created a conducive ecosystem where it is commonplace for people to pay for inputs using a QR code. Traders and wholesalers, such as the local sugar cane factory, also influenced DFS uptake. 

However, the ecosystem is dynamic and there is some way to go for better coordination. A case in point occurs with payments between local rice traders and growers. We spoke to a tech-savvy entrepreneur who, besides farming, ran a village stall and a petrol station, taking payments with ACLEDA and BCEL One Pay QR codes. He said he would like to be paid for his rice by a QR code, but he had never asked the trader to pay him this way because “everyone knows the trader only pays in cash”.  We then interviewed one of the main rice traders, who said that he would like to pay farmers for their rice by QR code, but he has never asked them because “they don’t use mobile wallets or banking apps.”  

We expect that many more insights will emerge as we begin to analyse the interviews and compare them with the data from Rounds 1 and 2. DFS use has been changing rapidly in both countries in the three years we have been collecting data, with a notable growth in usage amongst young farmers. We look forward to continuing to analyse the factors behind this dynamic ecosystem in ways that will be useful to researchers and policy makers into the future.