JoPACC and National Agricultural Research Center Team Up to Digitalize Payments for the Upcoming 2023 National Olive Festival

Demonstrating their unwavering commitment to social and national responsibility, the Jordan Payments and Clearing Company (JoPACC) and the National Agricultural Research Center (NARC) have announced a collaboration to digitalize payments for the 2023 National Olive Festival and signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to work towards this objective. With a history of popular success, the National Olive Festival is a non-profit traditional event that attracts crowds from across the Kingdom, providing a platform for farmers and rural families to showcase their local products and reach a wider audience. 

According to this collaboration, service, and product providers participating in the National Olive Festival will receive training workshops on digital financial services and digital payment acceptance prior to its commencement. It is worth mentioning that the festival welcomes a diverse range of participants, including smallholder farmers, rural families, women, and individuals of all ages, with a particular focus on engaging youth from across the entire Kingdom. Under the lens of digital financial inclusion, these groups are most in need of access to digital financial services to propel their businesses forward, improve their financial experience, and fortify their resilience against unforeseen crises. 

Through a participatory approach with stakeholders in the financial sector, JoPACC will coordinate with financial institutions in Jordan to promote digital financial services in the planned training workshops. Furthermore, this partnership entails exploring the offering of incentives to participants who accept digital payments during the festival. JoPACC will also provide technical support related to using digital financial services within the festival. 

In turn, the National Agricultural Research Center (NARC) will harness all means to execute training workshops efficiently, including coordinating the training program in partnership with JoPACC, placing the participants who will be trained, organizing the communication process with them, and providing the necessary analytical data to evaluate performance. 

The digitization of Olive Festival payments comes within the role undertaken by JoPACC in disseminating knowledge on digital financial services and increasing their adoption through its outreach programs. It also embodies NARC’s objective of serving the purposes of agricultural development sustainably and flexibly. 

It is worth mentioning that Dr. Nizar Haddad, the Director General of the National Agricultural Research Center, signed this MoU alongside Mrs. Enas Halaiqah, Senior Manager of the Knowledge Management and Business Analytics Department at JoPACC, representing the CEO of JoPACC, Her Excellency Ms. Maha Bahou. 

By joining forces, the two organizations will bring together their expertise in the financial and agricultural sectors to help underprivileged groups adopt and use digital financial services, which is invaluable in eliminating extreme poverty and achieving shared prosperity.