Evolution of Microfinance
Posted: February 24th, 2010 | Author: Jon Coon | Tags: microfinance, start-up | 1 Comment »I attended a short lecture by a great Prof. at USF, Larry Louie, which provided a brief overview of microfinance as an introductory to his graduate level course. Considering myself relatively in tune with the players in this field, my mind moved to the next step in the microfinance evolution. Three start-ups I’m following:
Vittana is an early-stage non-profit startup bringing student loans to the developing world through the power of person-to-person microfinance. We are a different kind of non-profit: we are designed from the ground up to be scalable, cost-effective, and just get things done.
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Our mission is to leverage mobile payment systems (MPS) to bring financial services to the unbanked poor. To do so, we are currently programming FrontlineSMS to function as middleware in order to connect any MPS and any microfinance management information system (MIS) in real time. As a result, microfinance institutions (MFIs) will be able to send and receive payments directly from the mobile wallet of their MIS, which will significantly reduce the operational costs of issuing credit.
By helping MFIs integrate mobile payments into their business strategies, we aim to eliminate geographic barriers to financial inclusion while simultaneously allowing users to generat robust auditing trails and client credit histories.
