Cooperatives Cooperate

It's time to connect the dots.

Cooperative Health Management Federation (trading as 1coophealth) with 210 member cooperatives is already a PIL partner. Their app was developed and is powered by Peppermint but the second phase of that development to include financial and payment services never proceeded.

Now consider Metro South Cooperative Bank (trading as 1coopbank) with 800 member cooperatives which, in 2021, stated that by 2022 they would be collaborating with leading fintechs to enable MSCB to expand and attract other markets. That fintech partnership has not yet become a reality.

This is what MSCB say about themselves on Facebook....



For us, the takeaways from CHMF and MSCB are that 1) cooperatives do not go it alone: they pool resources and its in their DNA to cooperate, 2) there has to be some commonality between the memberships of the two organisations, between CHMF's 210 member cooperatives and MSCB's 800 member cooperatives and 3) they both seem to have paused their move towards digitalisation.

Now consider MASS-SPECC which is a collection of cooperatives from throughout Mindanao which is going full steam ahead to digitalisation with Bizmoto. Some of MASS-SPECC's member cooperatives would have to be members of CHMF or MSCB or both.

So, given that we know cooperatives cooperate and that its highly likely that there are members that are common to all three, has it been decided among coops that MASS-SPECC is where the big launch into the digital space will happen first?

Filipino cooperatives would really really really like the Bizmoto business model as it offers employment for agents, riders and merchants, so there is more than one reason for Bizmoto to be chosen by cooperatives as their fintech partner of choice?

Is PIL on the verge of something MASS-IVE? WATCH THIS SPACE.