Now everyone, most especially private individuals without access to banking services, can open an account and have a simple and safe method of payment… Lemon Way solutions already enable millions of users to do their shopping (food, taxis etc) and transfer money to their friends and families…

The idea has a wonderfully simple and powerful appeal: Give a tiny loan to a poor person in a poor nation. Watch her start a small business – whether hawking tomatoes or fattening goats – that puts her and her family on the first rung of a ladder that will elevate them out of poverty and into the middle class. Repeat across the planet.

The conventional path to economic development is through the use of fossil fuels and the associated negative environmental impact. One alternative to encourage actual sustainable development is green microfinance, using small loans for environmentally beneficial or neutral business enterprises. Unlike traditional micro loans, conditions or incentives placed are placed on the loan condition to encourage the sustainable use of resources.

Conferences usually are not the venue for admitting failure. But on the first day of the Harvard University’s 2012 Social Enterprise Conference, Vikram Akula, the founder of SKS Microfinance who left the organization in November 2011, made just such an admission. In a speech delivered at the day’s closing reception, Akula described his experience first establishing the organization as a non-profit, converting to a for-profit model, and taking the company public in 2010. He recalled how Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank criticized him and the SKS model, and observed: “Today, I can look back at what we did and say, ‘Professor Yunus was right.’” “We really are at a crossroads,” The Economist’s Matt Bishop observed at the opening of the second day of Harvard’s Social Enterprise Conference. We’ve reached a point in time to rethink how markets work, and how more people can share in the benefits of the global economy, he noted.

Two young University of Washington graduates launch an innovative new type of micro-lending company called Lumana, helping entrepreneurs in rural Africa to create sustainable businesses.

Microfinance has largely become a city-based endeavor, but one example suggests it would be more useful if focused on rural communities. Microfinance -- the practice of personal small loans to spur creativity in developing nations -- has well-known rural roots.

So-called “impact investors” -- providers of capital to businesses that solve social challenges while generating a profit -- are the current rage in economic development. US President Barack Obama’s Office for Social Innovation and Civic Participation recently convened more than 100 practitioners to discuss how impact investing could be unleashed in the United States and the developing world.

Gabby Logan presents the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of the MicroLoan Foundation. The MicroLoan Foundation is a specialist ‘not for profit’ UK microfinance charity that provides microfinance (small loans of on average £70), business education and ongoing mentoring support to impoverished women in sub-Saharan Africa. This provides them with a “hand-up not a hand-out” so they can develop self-sustainable livelihoods for themselves and their families, and work their own way out of poverty. 99% of the loans are repaid and then recycled in full to help more women year after year.

Mobile phone use in Bangladesh is not a luxury now. Almost half of the country's 160 million population uses mobile phones, but very few have bank accounts. There were lot of talks in the past few years on how the big population could be brought under the banking services via their mobile handsets. The GSM Association (GSMA) predicts that by 2012, nearly 300 million of the previously "unbanked" will be using some form of mobile banking.

Grameen Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) today announced that they are jointly providing a $1.5 million credit guarantee to the Peruvian savings and credit cooperative Cooperativa de Ahorro y Credito (ABACO) to support approximately $3 million for local currency financing to two socially-focused Peruvian microfinance institutions (MFIs). Peru has an established microfinance sector, with mature institutions having relatively easy access to international capital markets. However, there continues to be a great need for local currency financing, especially among smaller microfinance institutions, which traditionally have not been eligible for loans from local banks.

“Do microloans work?” strikes Lilian Simbaqueba as an odd question. If they’re administered properly, they should. That’s what her company, LiSim, is in the businesses of doing. Started in 1996, LiSim is a risk-analysis company based in Bogota, Colombia that uses statistics and behavioral analysis to determine the inherent risk in granting credit to a given client. It offers outsourcing services to clients interested in developing credit scoring systems as well as selling software for a client to use in-house.

Mobile phone use in Bangladesh is not a luxury now. Almost half of the country's 160 million population uses mobile phones, but very few have bank accounts. There were lot of talks in the past few years on how the big population could be brought under the banking services via their mobile handsets. The GSM Association (GSMA) predicts that by 2012, nearly 300 million of the previously "unbanked" will be using some form of mobile banking.

. The first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, environmentalist Wangari Maathai, has died aged-71 in Nairobi after a long battle with cancer. Matthai became a key figure in Kenya after founding her Green Belt Movement in 1997 which campaigned for environmental conservation and good governance. In recent years, Maathai founded green groups and launched several campaigns against climate change and for environmental protection. Her organization planted some 40 million trees across Africa.

Women account for 75 percent of the agricultural producers in sub-Saharan Africa, but the majority of women farmers are living on only $1.25 per day, according to researchers from the Worldwatch Institute. Despite the challenging circumstances that women in developing countries face, important innovations in communications and organizing are helping women play a key role in the fight against hunger and poverty. "Access to credit, which provides women farmers with productive inputs and improved technologies, can be an effective tool in improving livelihoods in Africa and beyond," said Worldwatch Institute's executive director Robert Engelman.

Operators of Microfinance Banks (MFBs) appeared unimpressed with the revised supervisory and regulatory framework for micro-finance banks (MFBs) approved by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) last week.

Economic analysis is about understanding the workings of the economic system. Many elegant economic theories exist to analyse wealth-creating productive activities. Conventional economic theory focuses on a one-dimensional world.

The honeymoon with microfinance is over. Since the idea of lending or giving very small sums of money to poor people was introduced to the world by the pioneering Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, the approach has been taken up by many non-governmental organizations, donor agencies and the United Nations as an essential part of their poverty-reduction efforts. Microfinance has provided countless people with access to financial services.

Women account for 75 percent of the agricultural producers in sub-Saharan Africa, but the majority of women farmers are living on only $1.25 per day, according to researchers from the Worldwatch Institute

Competition among financial institutions is intensifying in Africa as more governments relax barriers to entry and open their countries' banking sectors to new players. The flurry of fresh entrants in some countries is credited with helping to drive down banking charges, improve access to banking services and spark off a wave of new products and services.

When a scientist has to run a micro-finance firm, a different approach is inevitable. That was precisely what happened when Dr Tara Thiagarajan, Chairperson, Madura Micro Finance Ltd, a neuroscientist by profession, was called upon to take over her late father's micro-finance business. Thrust into this new role, she suddenly had to grapple with a network of almost 20,000 self-help groups in Tamil Nadu. By and by, she discovered that they were going nowhere in particular, despite the micro loans. These were at best helping them to maintain their subsistence levels.

Kredits, a leading provider of software and technology solutions for microfinance institutions (“MFIs”), announced it has entered into bilateral agreements with MFI clients and regulators across multiple regions in order to provide the microfinance industry’s first multi-jurisdictional regulatory compliance software solution. In response to a rapidly evolving regulatory climate, Kredits is proactively meeting the challenge by providing its worldwide base of MFI clients with the advanced reporting and credit bureau support required to cost-effectively maintain regulatory compliance.

Today at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles, Temenos, the global provider of banking software, launched a complementary go-to-market model using Microsoft technologies to address affordable access to finance in emerging markets. Temenos was also today selected the Microsoft Financial Services Partner of the Year at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference

The Sun is reporting that animal behavior experts have kindly handed out iPads to Gorillas. Amazingly not a SINGLE one of the five tablets which download apps has been broken since being given out at Port Lympne wild animal park three weeks ago.

Do you have women in key positions? If you’re planning on targeting female customers, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to have great women on your team. Women are the routers and amplifiers of the social web. And they are the rocket fuel of ecommerce. The ongoing debate about women in tech has been missing a key insight. If you figure out how to harness the power of female customers, you can rock the world.

A day after U.S. assistant secretary of state for south and central Asian affairs Robert Blake appealed to the Bangladeshi government to reconsider its dismissal of 70-year-old microfinance guru Muhammad Yunus from the Grameen Bank, IPS spoke with the president and CEO of Women's World Banking (WWB), currently the most comprehensive network of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in the world. She dismissed the notion, which is swiftly gaining momentum in many quarters, that microcredit is ineffective as a sustainable method of poverty alleviation and must be replaced.

Microfinance USA is the conference where the nation's leading microfinance champions exchange ideas and information that set the agenda for the future of the field. Join the conversation with expert practitioners, top investors, and frontline researchers to explore and expand microfinance in the U.S.

The wisdom in development finance has long been that lending to and saving by poor micro-entrepreneurs and farmers is doomed to failure: costs are too high, the poor are not creditworthy and they are not able to save and insure, and so on. Bold experimentation with new institutions in microfinance, supported by public action, have resulted in a number of success stories and changed this pessimistic assessment during the past fifteen years or so. In this paper, a number of arguments are put forward that call for a continuation of the support towards institutional innovation and bottom-up adaptation of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) in developing countries. Published in 2001 by Manfred Zeller

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) will soon launch the £10 million Financial Innovation Challenge Fund as stated by the Deputy Governor of SBP, Yaseen Anwar on Saturday.

Operators of Microfinance Banks (MFBs) in Lagos state have concluded arrangement to establish a trust fund aimed at protecting them from liquidity shocks as well as to also help manage their liquidity position. The Chairman, National Association of Microfinance Banks (NAMB), Lagos State Chapter, Mr. Olufemi Babajide, disclosed this.

Pakistan can boost its economic growth by encouraging development of microfinance banks, small farmers and small and medium enterprises (SMEs), according to State Bank of Pakistan’s (SBP) former governor Dr Ishrat Husain.

The United Nations recently announced a $90 million loan for strengthening access to rural financial services and markets, and promoting private sector development in Tanzania. More than 500,000 vulnerable rural households, including smallholder farmers, livestock keepers, fishers, small-scale rural entrepreneurs, traders and artisans, grass-roots microfinance institutions, processing and marketing groups, poor rural women and rural youth are expected to get benefit from this programme.

7 Women Leaders Speak On The Role Of Microfinance In Women's Entrepreneurship

Joke Orelope-Adefulire, the Lagos State Commissioner for Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, has urged microfinance banks to serve the active poor diligently. Mrs Orelope-Adefulire urged the National Association of Microfinance Banks to come up with programmes that could change the lives of the poor, and advised it to set up a taskforce that would check activities of fraudsters in their midst.

Financial inclusion is a generic problem that affects most developing countries, where the proportion of unbanked is very high. It is, therefore, unsurprising that inclusion models have been deployed in various forms in many countries. Some, of course, have done better than others and we shall also subsequently explore a few models abroad to learn from what they have done right. India has had a fair number of initiatives in the Financial Inclusion space, and we cover a select few of them that are involved in m-banking and cards-issuance.

Microfinance was once a darling of international economics. Small loans between $50 and $500 to low-income individuals and small businesses were believed by many to offer a ladder out of poverty. But recently, microcredit has come under heat, often for inaccurate reasons. Here are five myths we need to overcome.

Recent microfinance crises and debate over the practices of microfinance institutions (MFIs) have made it more apparent than ever that financial performance should not be the only standard by which MFIs should be evaluated. To measure an MFI's overall performance, social performance management -- the process of ensuring that an MFI acts in a socially responsible manner -- has emerged as a critical factor. Thanks to the support of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and the Ford Foundation, the Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX), the industry's leading source for financial and social performance data, now offers funders and other stakeholders easy access to social performance information in conjunction with financial performance information. As part of its ongoing mission to enhance transparency in the microfinance industry, MIX has taken major steps both to integrate social performance reporting with standard financial reporting and to enhance data access.

Microfinance has taken a beating lately for shifting far afield from its humanitarian origins, originally funding tiny businesses run by poor women in developing countries to feed their families. It's become a good idea gone bad, a charitable enterprise spoiled as profit surpassed people as the rationale for investment. It sickens the soul. But all is not lost. A new concept in which the interest charged on a microloan isn't a percentage, but rather an improvement to a community, has seen early success in Haiti. Although small in scale, this model might be just the thing to help microfinance rebound as an effective, credible and responsible method of funding small businesses lacking capital that don't qualify for loans from traditional banks. The concept comes from Zafèn, an online microfinance initiative approaching its first anniversary on April 1.

The backlash against microcredit questions the myth that the poor can easily climb out of poverty with some credit; or that microcredit can be financially self-sustaining. Microcredit is supposed to be a lifeline for borrowers, a winner for investors, and a self-funding route out of poverty for the world. The reality is far more complex. Thus, microcredit requires a delicate and ongoing balancing act between undesirable extremes. It's no wonder then that accusations fly when balance is lost.

Leading aid agency CARE International UK has launched www.lendwithcare.org - an innovative micro-finance website aimed at transforming the way people give. Lendwithcare.org enables people in the UK to invest in entrepreneurs in the developing world. Investors can lend from just £15 directly to a chosen individual to help them start or improve a small business.

With the first official purging of the microfinance sector in 2010, four years after the introduction of the microfinance policy in Nigeria, depositors of the closed banks can now heave sighs of relief as the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) has concluded payment of the first batch of depositors.

NetSuite Inc., the industry’s leading vendor of cloud-based financials / ERP software suites, today announced the latest social enterprises to benefit from a NetSuite.org product donation. NetSuite.org is NetSuite’s unique corporate citizenship program, which enables growing social enterprises to access product donations of NetSuite’s cloud-based business software service that helps deliver increased productivity, reduced operating costs, and improved organizational flexibility.

CERMi’s mission is to promote academic research in order to support the key stakeholders in the microfinance industry: NGOs, cooperatives, donors, investment funds and financial institutions, and to develop suitable frameworks to critically examine existing microfinance practices.

Services called Microfinance plus services can be regarded as interesting in the framework of integrated development. Since these services include social and sanitary dimensions, indeed we can reasonably consider Microfinance to have a great potential as a powerful social and sanitary tool. Nonfinancial services can be powerful development tools in many environments and communities, provided they are designed with the populations and with care to respond to the real needs of the populations served; they can even be of greater importance to rural women via whom, their families and their whole communities can benefit from them and be empowered.

While it's sometimes hard to quantify success, one thing is certain – the ripple effect and long-term effects of good development work impact more people for generations to come than any of us will know.

Credit unions, a small part of Britain's financial landscape which has grown as banks cut back on loans after the credit crisis, aim to raise their profile further after an increase in business last year. "People are increasingly seeing credit unions as a safe and convenient place to save," Mark Lyonette, chief executive of the Association of British Credit Unions, told Reuters on Friday.

More than 1.5mn loans worth $831mn have been given out in the past seven years, said the Microfinance Investment Support Facility for Afghanistan (MISFA), which was set up by the government in 2003 to coordinate the sector. Thirty years of conflict have shattered Afghanistan’s economy and infrastructure, leaving two-thirds of the roughly 30mn population illiterate and at least a third in dire poverty.

One of the most popular programs for helping the world's poor has gone sour in India. Microcredit, the practice of making small loans to very poor people, grew into a multibillion-dollar business. But microfinance companies have been accused of predatory lending and collection practices so harsh that they drove some borrowers to suicide. One state government in India has enacted legislation that will, in effect, put the microlenders out of business.

In an attempt to revive the crisis struck Microfinance sector, the International Financial Corporation, IFC a private sector arm of the World Bank Group is exploring avenues to facilitate fund flows to MFIs. This is an important development in the wake of the industry suffering continuous setbacks.

Shanti Microfinance, a not-for-profit organization, is raising a $772,000 (£500,000) fund backed by UK and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. The firm has already disbursed £10k (USD) and plans to start its operations in Gujarat before moving to Mumbai next year.

Kiva, the world's first personal micro-lending website, has teamed with KIEDF (Koret Israel Economic Development Funds) to launch its first and only partnership with an Israeli microfinance institution. This alliance will allow individuals anywhere to make small loans through the Kiva website to Bedouin women of the Negev, Arab Israelis in northern Israel, and other low-income populations throughout Israel.

Wokai is an organization that allows people to contribute directly to microfinance institutions in China, which in turn lend the money to entrepreneurs in rural China. It is a non-profit organization based in Oakland, with core operations in Beijing, supported by individual donors, corporate sponsors, fundraising events and grants.

Microfinance has lost its soul. Six fundamental shifts in the practice of microfinance have left it operating more like a for-profit bank and less like an innovative pro-poor movement.

Debate over the value of microfinance in the developing world appears to be long overdue. Arguments against microfinance center around the claim that it is a development strategy increasingly forced on the poor, and that those who are claimed to benefit from it the most--poor women--are actually its chief victims. Critics have long sought a platform to reveal the weaknesses and explode the myths supporting microfinance.

China Mobile's Nongxintong - or farming information service - launched four years ago. The company is currently focusing on expanding its delivery in China's west and south-west regions. "Building the mobile network and covering most of the country's administrative villages, we realised that there was only a network signal. In rural areas, this is not enough," explains Liu Jing, a local manager for the service at China Mobile.

The Board of directors of the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) has approved a Microfinance Risk Participation Programme, marking ADB’s first large scale private sector microfinance initiative.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide up to $10 million for a private equity fund that aims to expand microfinance and small bank lending to poor, underserved groups across the region.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus is under pressure after critics accused him of misusing development aid. The father of microfinance told SPIEGEL ONLINE the allegations are "a total fabrication."

The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation , NDIC, has commenced the compilation of the list of Managing Directors and top management staff of the failed microfinance banks whose licences were recently withdrawn by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, with a view to prosecuting them.

The Group of 20 Summit scheduled for November in Seoul will provide a forum for a wide range of economic and fiscal issues, ranging from World Bank governance to fossil fuel subsidies.

A meta-evaluation on microfinance released by the Evaluation Cooperation Group of international financial institutions reports that microfinance operations have had difficulty in reaching the very poor.

The grant funded a one day workshop in Lusaka to look at gender issues in rural microfinance programmes. 43 people participated in the workshop, including managers and gender specialists from government ministries, financial institutions, community based organizations and NGOs, donors and colleges. There was also participation from IFAD and FAO.

Using Skype as a medium, a lecture at the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business was broadcast to UNC students along with students at other schools. The streamed lecture was part of an ongoing series that allows students to have access to the most prominent minds in microfinance.

Microfinance was supposed to mean economic empowerment for the poorest of the poor, many of them female villagers living in India's southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh. Instead, the sector has spiralled into crisis in recent weeks, where the state is blaming 57 recent suicides on aggressive loan collectors.

Capping microfinance interest rates will hurt the poor. There are better ways to regulate the industry.

Rural credit is changing the face of the Chinese countryside. The need for financing in rural areas is growing, but capital is still flowing out of the rural market. The Postal Savings Bank of China has provided us with a case to consider when pondering how rural microfinance can provide a sustainable business model.

Microfinance programmes are currently being promoted as a key strategy for simultaneously addressing both poverty alleviation and women's empowerment. Where financial service provision leads to the setting up or expansion of micro-enterprises there are a range of potential impacts. A Briefing Paper by Linda Mayoux.

WAM began in 2003 after women professionals in the microfinance industry, most of them based in Washington, DC, began meeting, at first informally in each others' homes. This growing group of WAM Founders came together to discuss areas of common concern, to decide if a more formal organization made sense, to explore what such an organization might do to support women who work in the microfinance industry and, ultimately, to support the development of the industry itself. After several months of planning and program design, WAM was formally launched in October 2003. Membership has grown steadily since.

Lemon Way is an Independent Software Vendor that helps banks build a differentiated competitive advantage with innovating solutions based on mobile devices or TV channels. The software suite Wonderbank enables banks to provide their customers robust, secure, transactional solutions for routine and advanced banking enquiries.

Claudia McKay and Mark Pickens from CGAP have pulled together a comprehensive global pricing study on banking services targeting poor, unbanked and underbanked people in Africa, Asia and Brazil. The study examines pricing for services targeting unbanked and underbanked poor people in 10 countries. The conclusion: mobile banking and other forms of branchless banking are cheaper than traditional banking, but the gap between the two may not be as wide as some may think.

The recent controversy surrounding the microfinance sector has entirely eclipsed the fact that it is the first effort in India to have delivered financial services to remote corners of the country in a self-sustaining manner. The stakes are high for India’s poor, and we have to pave the way for orderly growth in the sector. Here is our view on some key issues that have featured in the current debate.

rise of entrepreneurial innovations that use mainstream financial instruments to facilitate social development. Corporate social investment (CSI) experts predict that a growing merger between social entrepreneurship and CSI will be one of the world's top trends in the future.

Probanx Information Systems specializes in development of software for the financial institutions, offering multi-currency and multi-lingual banking systems with a large variety of modules, based on the latest technologies. We install and support turn-key international Banking Software and Microfinance Software solutions for retail banks, commercial banks, Internet banks and microfinance banks.

Two Social Entrepreneurs one from Morocco and one from Tunisia - were recognized as leading social innovators during a plenary session at the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa, Marrakech, Morocco on 26 October. The awards were conferred by Hilde Schwab, Co-Founder and Chairperson of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

The International Financial Corporation (IFC), entering into the World Bank (WB) Group, together with the Financial Commission on Regulation of Mongolia and Micro-Finance Development Fund (MFDF) has organized awareness-raising tour to Mongolia on studying of legislative practice on microfinancing for regulators from Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

US$2.3 trillion has been spent by the global North on international aid in the last five decades. Nevertheless, close to half of the world's population still lives in poverty. One in five live in extreme poverty. Aid is not working as well as it should. Unless we can inject the spirit of innovation into this provision, the extreme poor we try to help in places like Bangladesh will continue to remain poor.

After several years of very high profile attention on mobile money and other branchless banking schemes, we think it’s time to test the hype. Or more accurately, we’ve wanted to for awhile. But acquiring good data is really, really hard. We’ve been unable to say in anything but a fragmented, mostly anecdotal way whether the unbanked really use branchless banking, what they use it for, if it saves them any money, and what more they might want (but aren’t getting yet). Just because we are excited about branchless banking doesn’t mean it is living up to the promises we make on its behalf.

­A significant number of people using new technologies such as mobile phones to access financial services in developing countries are completely new clients for the financial services industry, according to new research by CGAP. The growing interest of so-called branchless banking in recent years has, until now, largely lacked data showing whether it delivers on potential to bring the poor into the formal economy.

A new initiative to expand these programs to the broader market called the Small Business Banking Network (SBBN) will launch in November. The SBBN is designed to bolster the capacity and effectiveness of financial institutions to profitably serve small businesses in developing countries, helping to close the gap between microfinance and commercial banking.

Even as the microfinance sector is facing the possibility of new regulations that will reduce interest rates lenders charge in Indian hinterland, perhaps resulting in a drop in margins, rich Indians still feel there is money to be made at least in firms providing services to firms doing business at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’.

The Norwegian Microfinance Initiative (NMI), a partnership between the Norwegian public and private sectors that provides assistance for microfinance institutions (MFIs) in developing countries, recently loaned KES 325 million (approximately USD 4.03 million) to Kenya Women Finance Trust – Deposit Taking Microfinance (KWFT- DTM), a microfinance institution based in Nairobi, Kenya, and UGX 1.25 billion (approximately USD 548,000) to the Uganda Finance Trust (UFT), an MFI in Kampala, Uganda, to support microenterprises.

Women entrepreneurs constitute one of the key drivers of Africa's sustainable growth. As Africa's lead development partner, the African Development Bankactively supports women entrepreneurs.

Microfinance has had a quick slide down the popularity charts— from being celebrated as a magic wand against poverty to being condemned as a business riddled with loan sharks.

Why the time is right for sustainable thinking by pension funds and institutional investors: When Roger Urwin, global head of investment content at Towers Watson, the investment consultant, turns his mind to a subject, the pensions world listens. Urwin, one of the most influential investment advisors around, has worked with many of the world’s largest retirement schemes. His recent attention to the theme of sustainable investing is notable because of his experience in the reality of pension fund practice and governance.

Participants gathered at Deutsche Bank’s Wall Street office for the second day of the Microfinance Impact and Innovation Conference. Panelists included both academics and practitioners, sharing research and experiences from the field. They attempted to tackle the daunting question: how do you design credit products that work for the poor, not against them?

Canada will invest $43.4-million in new aid to Francophone African countries, the most tangible product of Stephen Harper’s trip to the weekend’s summit of Francophone nations. The funding, part of $1.1-billion in aid that the Conservative government promised in June to protect mothers and their children at the G8 summit of leading developed nations in Huntsville, Muskoka, will help protect 1.1 million women and children from malnourishment and sexual violence.

A group of India's largest microfinance institutions filed a lawsuit Tuesday to block strict new regulations laid down by the state of Andhra Pradesh — a crucial market for small loans — after reports that high interest and coercive loan collection by microfinance groups had led to some 30 suicides.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), a development finance institution headquartered in London, has loaned Export and Credit Bank (ECB), a commercial bank in Macedonia, EUR 6 million (USD 8.3 million) for on-lending to local businesses undertaking sustainable energy investmets or investments aimed at improving their competitiveness in local and European markets. EBRD holds a 25 percent stake in ECB.

Samasta Microfinance is a public limited, for profit Non Banking Financial Company, established in March 2008. We offer microfinance solutions to the urban and rural poor in South India, and currently operate in the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Their aim is to drive social change and be a catalyst for entrepreneurial ambition by providing a host of financial and non-financial products to our members. Their loan products are geared towards income generation supplemented by loans for education and social commitments. Samasta's operations use the Joint Liability Group (JLG) model.

Lemon Way is an Independent Software Vendor that helps banks build a differentiated competitive advantage with innovating solutions based on mobile devices or TV channels. The software suite Wonderbank enables banks to provide their customers robust, secure, transactional solutions for routine and advanced banking enquiries.

The apex bank yesterday said it had granted provisional approval for new licences to 121 out of the 224 microfinance institutions, whose licences were recently withdrawn.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) at Colorado State University provides innovative training in community-based development (online and face-to-face), consultation, evaluation, and project support services for individuals and governmental, international non-governmental, and community-based organizations around the world.

Village Earth's mission is to help reconnect communities to the resources that promote human well-being by enhancing social and political empowerment, community self-reliance and self-determination.

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, will work with Bank Constanta to improve its risk management practices, which will help the bank increase lending to smaller businesses in Georgia. This initiative is part of a broader IFC strategy to strengthen local banks in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

Lyon created a system to bring formal financial services to microfinance institutions and poor entrepreneurs via a mobile phone. He believes the new software, to be launched by the organization he founded, FrontlineSMS:Credit, could change the world of microfinance by changing the way the poor interact with the institutions.

The asset growth of microfinance investment intermediaries (MIIs) fell to 21 per cent at estimated $8.2 billion in 2009 from 31 per cent growth in 2008, hurt by the global financial crisis. The growth is expected to slow down further to 15 per cent in 2010.

Rural Finance is about providing financial services for people living in rural areas. This Learning Centre aims to assist organisations in developing countries to build their capacity to deliver improved financial services which meet the needs of rural households and businesses.

The three-day Asian Microfinance Forum 2010 wrapped up bringing to a close three full days of conferences, panel sessions and seminars all of which were well attended by almost 500 delegates from 50 countries who were in Colombo for the event as well as many local industrialists, bankers and other interested parties.

Newton Microfinance Institution is the leading private financial institution in Lao PDR. Their vision is to make sure that every Lao resident not only has access to but also benefits from the financial blessings globally enjoyed. They are installing Internet banking services to their clients in several languages including Lao, English, french, etc.

Confirmation that Cambodia’s largest micro-lending organisation Prasac will start to accept deposits represents the latest sign the Kingdom’s microfinance sector is booming. But MFIs need to be weary of straying too far from their original mandate – notably, to financially assist the country’s rural poor.

Lots of banks are getting on board with basic mobile banking this year, but there's not been too much innovation when it comes to functionality. A handful of banks are leading the way with widely available capabilities that set them apart from the pack.

Consumer groups are applauding moves by the National Australia Bank (NAB) that are set to save credit card customers up to hundreds of dollars a year. "There are plenty of other tricks and traps with credit cards that need to be ironed out and we would invite the others to do likewise - move before regulation comes in." Whether or not they do is likely to be watched closely by the holders of the more than 16 million credit cards currently on issue in Australia.

Online retailers are spending too much time and money dealing with card not present payments, a new study has found. “It is surprising that UK merchants are still opting to continue with manual reconciliation and patchwork payment systems.”

The announcement was made by a top Nokia executive at the Mobey Forum's 10th anniversary meeting in Helsinki this morning.

Bank card issuers will be punished for collecting fees for inter-network ATM internal-network transactions that have not been approved by the State Bank of Viet Nam, said Ho Huu Hanh, a representative of the State Bank’s HCM City branch. Funds collected through these illegal fees would also be appropriated to the State budget, Hanh warned.

Thirty-five bankers and trainers from 15 institutions in Cambodia, Laos and Viet Nam yesterday participated in a training programme on building sustainable small and medium-sized banking operations in HCM City.

Consumers in the Netherlands will be using smartphones as mobile wallets within two years as result of a joint venture between top banks and mobile operators.

Grameen‐Jameel, a social business that serves the microfinance sector in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), announces it has entered Turkey. Grameen-Jameel has signed partnership agreements with the two leading microfinance institutions in Turkey, providing them with financial support and technical assistance amounting to over US$ 5 million, with the objective to alleviate poverty in Turkey by reaching and financing 16,000 underprivileged families.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) Provides Microfinance Institution (MFI) Inecobank Support to Expand Access to Trade Finance in Armenia

The International Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, has announced a record investment volume in Sub-Saharan Africa for its 2010 fiscal year, underscoring its commitment to the region's private sector development, especially to supporting growth in the lowest income countries and those affected by conflict including Liberia.

A group of financial experts has ordered all commercial banks in the Central African Economic and Monetary Community, CEMAC, to raise the minimum amount of their capital reserves.

Microfinance doesn’t help the very poor. While the argument that all the attention the microlending industry attracts sometimes diverts funds from reaching programs that need it more is not new, we were surprised to see it outlined by Vikram Akula, the founder of SKS Microfinance Ltd.

Residents in sub-Saharan African countries report a wide range of awareness about the availability of microfinance lending in their communities, suggesting these institutions remain locally inaccessible to many who would benefit most from using them. Malawians (65%) and Ugandans (63%) are the most likely to say they are aware of these institutions in their communities, while respondents from Ivory Coast (18%), Democratic Republic of the Congo (16%), and Zimbabwe (15%) are the least likely to say the same.

This AfricaFocus contains a diverse selection of recent books likely to be of interest and new to AfricaFocus readers. You will find, for example, new books by Africa's distinguished elders, such as Achebe, wa Thiong'o, and Mandela. Selected new books from publishers such as Africa World Press, HSRC Press, and Aflame Books. Books on topical themes such as SMS activism and other ICT developments, on India and China's relations with Africa, and on xenophobia and migration. And more.

All Nokia smartphones released by the company from 2011 will come with NFC (Near Field Communication) technology built in, according to Near Field Communications World (NFCW).

Mobile payment users worldwide are forecast to increase 2.1 percent to 109 million by the end of 2010, a US-based research firm said in a report.

Mobile technology has the greatest chance of delivering financial services to Africa’s estimated 325 million low-income, un-banked people. Examples of African financial innovations abound and the results are being felt across the continent, where mobile phone penetration continues to skyrocket. Dianna Games writes about the success stories and the need for investors to think from the ground up.

On July 1 Open Revolution and Geocell announced the ultimate innovative mobile payment method - MobiPay, which allows you to make purchases, bill payments and person to person money transfers much more easily, more quickly, more safely and more conveniently by mobile phone.

Matthias Omeh, president, National Association of Microfinance Banks (NAMB), on Monday advised microfinance banks to partner with credit bureaux to ascertain the status of their customers.

Unisys is a worldwide information technology services and solutions company. Our 37,000 people help clients in more than 100 countries use technology to seize opportunities, overcome challenges and succeed in the global economy. We offer business solutions led by our expertise in consulting and systems integration, outsourcing, network services and security – coupled with leading enterprise-class server and related technologies.

Misys plc (UK) is a global software products and solutions company and serves customers in the international banking and securities, international healthcare, and UK general insurance industries. Misys employs over 6,000 people internationally. Misys was founded in 1979 to supply computer systems to UK insurance brokers. Now it is one of the world's largest software solutions companies, supplying customers in the banking, healthcare and financial services industries with IT and outsourcing facilities to improve their business processes.

Swiss group, TEMENOS, has over 300 client names worldwide, has systems live in over 500 client sites, operating in more than 100 countries. Founded in 1993, TEMENOS Group AG is a provider of integrated, modular, core banking systems that provides banks with a single, real-time view of the client across the enterprise. TEMENOS delivers 24/7 functionality to the wholesale, retail and private banking sectors, or partnering with central banks on core system replacement. TEMENOS is established as an international leader in the banking software industry. The company has expertise and commitment in projects. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the company has 34 offices in 29 countries and is listed on the main segment of the SWX Swiss Exchange (TEMN).

Infosys provides a complete range of IT consulting outsourcing services based on strong domain and business expertise and strategic alliances with leading technology providers. Infosys' service offerings span business and technology consulting, application services, systems integration, product engineering, custom software development, maintenance, re-engineering independent testing and validation services, IT infrastructure services and business process outsourcing (BPO). Infosys is a leading global IT organization with over 40 offices and development centers in India, China, Australia, the Czech Republic, Poland, the UK, Canada and Japan.

TATA Consultancy Services Financial Solutions (TCSFS) is a global and innovative company with a strategic focus on the present and future requirements of financial institutions. TCSFS goal is to enable their clients to meet the business challenges of modern-day banking and to achieve and sustain a competitive edge. TATA Consultancy Services acquired the former TKS Group.

Part of the Greece-based group Intracom Holdings established in 1977, INTRACOM IT SERVICES is a provider and systems integrator of technology solutions for banking and financial institutions, covering core banking, treasury, risk management, Phone/Internet/WAP Banking, Call centers, etc. INTRACOM IT SERVICES is an IT services provider in the Greek market and an IT solutions integrator in S.E. Europe and the M. East.

SAB is a French vendor of core banking solutions with an international presence, mainly in francophile institutions across Europe, Africa, Middle East and the Pacific. Established in 1989, SAB is an independent group that publishes an integrated software package for banking and financial institutions: the SAB solution for front to back office banking operations.

Probanx Information Systems specializes in development of software for the financial institutions, offering multi-currency and multi-lingual banking systems with a large variety of modules, based on the latest technologies. We install and support turn-key international Banking Software and Microfinance Software solutions for retail banks, commercial banks, Internet banks and microfinance banks.

Welcome to this blog about Microfinance, Innovations and Sustainable Development