India's National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), working with the Vadodara-based agri-fintech 24X7 Moneyworks Consulting, has onboarded more than 300,000 Kisan Credit Card (KCC) applications across cooperative banks and regional rural banks since December 2025, the Financial Express reported on Sunday.

The eKCC portal is built for cooperative banks and primary agricultural credit societies (PACS). It authenticates a farmer through Aadhaar, validates land records and sets a loan limit from the crop and the area under cultivation, Ranjeet Gautam, founder, managing director and chief executive of 24X7 Moneyworks Consulting, told the paper. In less than a year the platform has reached nearly 238 cooperative banks and about 32,000 PACS, and about 1.7 lakh applications have come through that cooperative network alone.

Farmers can see the district's scale of finance for each crop and their own eligibility limit on the portal, Gautam said. Bank officials described the conventional KCC process as fraught with inefficiencies: several visits to the branch, paper forms and turnaround times of three to four weeks. A Nabard official said the digital route could improve access, transparency and efficiency in dispensing farm credit.

Nabard holds a 10 per cent stake in 24X7 Moneyworks Consulting, bought for an undisclosed sum in its first investment in a bootstrapped start-up. The company has also built a platform to manage interest-subvention claims under the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund with real-time validation and disbursement.

A KCC gives a farmer affordable credit for seeds, fertiliser and pesticides. There are 77.2 million operational KCC holders with landholdings, including 2.4 lakh cards issued for fisheries and 4.4 million for animal husbandry. In FY26, agricultural credit from commercial banks, cooperatives and regional rural banks crossed Rs 32.5 lakh crore, about 60 per cent of it short-term crop loans and the rest investment lending in agriculture and allied sectors.

Under the agriculture ministry's modified interest subvention scheme, KCC holders can borrow up to Rs 3 lakh in short-term loans at 7 per cent a year, with a further 3 per cent subvention for prompt repayment that brings the effective rate to 4 per cent.

Reported by Sandip Das for the Financial Express.

Source: Financial Express Agriculture