Rugs company to pay artisans through mobile wallet

A rugs company has partnered with Vodafone to facilitate payments to about 8,000 artisans in remote areas of the state through the telecom giant's mobile wallet service.
The partnership between Jaipur Rugs and the telco will benefit 8,000 home-based artisans who work for the company.
"Most of them are based in rural and remote areas of the state and do not have access to the basic financial services so we entered in partnership with Vodafone to facilitate payments to artisans in Rajasthan," Jaipur Rugs Founder Nand Kishore Chaudhary said.
The company has around 40,000 artisans across six state and the facility has been started from Rajasthan first.

Business Head- Rajasthan Circle of Vodafone India, Amit Bedi, said that the money transfer service will facilitate on timely payment to artisans and enable them to encash wages from their nearest agent through mobile wallet service M-Pesa.
Initially, around 200 artisans of the 8000 artisans associated with the company in Rajasthan have been covered with the money transfer service and payment to rest of the artisans will be facilitated in coming days.