Tarfin

Tarfin is a Turkish agricultural fintech that supplies farmers with agricultural inputs — fertilizer, seed, feed, chemicals, equipment, irrigation systems and fuel — and finances those purchases with deferred, post-harvest payment terms. Farmers use the Tarfin Mobil app (Android and iOS) to set their location, browse and compare products and prices across nearby authorized retailers, filter by brand, and apply for either cash purchase or buy-now-pay-at-harvest financing. Applications made through the app or at a retailer are approved instantly, and after purchase an invoice is sent by SMS; the invoice can be used by farmers to apply for government fertilizer and seed support programs.

The company combines a physical agri-dealer network with proprietary risk-scoring models and data analytics. Repayments are made by wire transfer or at contracted bank branches on the payment date the farmer selects at the time of purchase. Tarfin also funds its receivables through capital markets: it has issued asset-backed securities (VDMK) via dedicated asset financing funds, lease certificates (sukuk) and commercial paper, positioning these as investment instruments for domestic and foreign investors.

Beyond the core agricultural offering (Tarfin Tarım), the company operates Tarfin Flex, a consumer buy-now-pay-later product for splitting purchases into flexible instalments. The board of directors comprises chairman Ali Emre Ballı, vice chairman Yiğit Gözübüyük, and members Mehmet Memecan and Boğaç Serkan Güldü. Tarfin also maintains an open-source engineering presence under the GitHub organization tarfin-labs, publishing PHP/Laravel packages such as laravel-spatial, netgsm, zbar-php, event-machine and a Moka payment gateway integration.

Founding story

Mehmet Memecan began his career in the United States trading fertilizer and agricultural commodities, later holding international fertilizer supply and sales management roles in Switzerland, and subsequently managed the Turkish operations of an international trading company across fertilizer distribution and the agricultural supply chain. Concluding that access to finance was a critical constraint on sustainable growth in agriculture, he combined that sector experience with technology to found Tarfin in 2017.

Business model

Tarfin sits between agricultural input retailers and farmers: farmers order fertilizer, seed, feed, equipment and other approved inputs through the Tarfin Mobil app or at an authorized retailer, choose cash or deferred harvest-time payment, and receive an instant approval decision with a verification code valid for seven days to complete the purchase at the retailer. No membership certificate or collateral documents are required and Tarfin states that no collection charges, commissions or additional fees are applied at the due date, with early payment generating a discount applied to the farmer's next order. Retailers join the network without a membership fee and are onboarded by regional managers after applying through the website. Alongside the agricultural business, Tarfin offers a consumer instalment product, Tarfin Flex, which lets users split purchases ranging from phones to vehicles into instalments with a low down payment.

Revenue derives from the financing and sale of agricultural inputs with deferred harvest-time payment terms — Tarfin states that farmers pay no collection charges or commissions at the due date and offers early-payment discounts — and from capital markets funding structures built on its agricultural receivables, including asset-backed securities, lease certificates and commercial paper.

Traction

As of January 2022 the company reported financing over 18,000 transactions for more than 12,000 farmers through 240 partner retail locations, covering over 440,000 acres of farmland. By December 2021 it reported having supplied and financed over USD 8 million in agricultural inputs to 32,000 farmers via more than 800 partner points of sale in over 70 cities. Tarfin Mobil reached 260,000 farmers within two years of launch. Current company figures cite 79 cities served, more than 1,400 service points, over 60,000 farmers and more than 600,000 app downloads.

Latest developments

Tarfin's disclosed legal notices through 2026 show ongoing capital markets activity, including commercial paper issuances, domestic lease certificate issuances and tranche approvals from the Capital Markets Board, redemptions from the TMKŞ Tarfin First and Second Asset Financing Fund VDMK programs, credit rating notifications, a capital increase, an extraordinary general assembly, a planned subsidiary share transfer and a company acquisition by its subsidiary. The company also reports 79 cities served, more than 1,400 service points, over 60,000 farmers and more than 600,000 Tarfin Mobil downloads, and markets a consumer instalment product, Tarfin Flex.