Blog

Highlights from the CGAP Technology Blog – October 2010

The launch of TigoPesa in Tanzania was the headline on our blog starting in October.

Branchless Banking 2010: Is the Hype Justified?

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.

Defining Microfinance Creatively in Russia

In August 2010, several internet-based media in Russia, including a number of very popular ones, published information about a company called AktivDen’gi (Active Money).

Are We Drifting Yet?

For many in the industry, debates about pricing, profitability, capital markets, investors, and welfare of clients, have a common root in one fundamental concern: mission drift.

How Sensitive Are Microfinance Clients to Interest Rates?

Many of us have thought for a long time that microcredit clients are not very sensitive to interest rates. But is that actually true?

Good Business Can Be Good Development

Buyers should be wary of an MFI rush to market for quick IPOs. There is a grave risk that in pursuit of a successful and timely IPO listing, MFIs could lead to poor decisions over growth, underwriting and governance.

Trickle Up Graduation Pilot Film on “The Test of Poverty”

A new documentary entitled “The Test of Poverty,” which is partly-financed by CGAP, follows the progress out of poverty of two women out of 300 participating in the Trickle Up Ultra Poor Program, one of the nine pilots in the CGAP-Ford Foundation Graduation Program.

Basel Blesses Microfinance

Financial inclusion is moving beyond national boundaries to the international stage and the standard-setting bodies.

Has the Microfinance Market Come of Age?

Compartamos and SKS. What do these two have in common? Where do they differ? What lessons, if any, can we draw from studying these first two, historic events?

Getting Back to Governance

A lack of good corporate governance lies at the heart of some of the recent failures in microfinance.

How Branchless Banking Can Foster Savings Accounts for the Poor

How can government and private sector most affect the uptake and usage of branchless banking among the unserved majority by 2020?

Mobile Banking for Those with No Mobile

Safaricom’s M-Pesa is now so well known in the mobile banking world that it has come to be accepted by some as a blueprint for mobile financial services. The service relies on the phone in the hands of the customer (now more than 12 million) to perform transactions and the phone in the hands of the agent (all 20,000 of them) to credit and debit accounts.

Was SKS Ready for the IPO?

With an already nervous RBI (Reserve Bank of India) and Ministry of Finance wary of the path being charted out by the Indian MFIs and now SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India), the market regulator asking SKS unpleasant questions, it’s perhaps a time to pause and introspect.

Microinsurance Momentum in the Philippines

Over a hundred practitioners gathered in Manila on Friday, October 1 for a consultation on the new “Roadmap for Financial Literacy on Microinsurance,” an action plan prepared by a Technical Working Group comprised of all the key stakeholders from government, the microfinance and cooperative sectors and the insurance industry.

Is SKS Any Different from Wal-Mart?

We may prefer co-operative banks, which don’t make a lot of money for any one individual but do provide safe and accessible savings products to poor people. In spite of some notable exceptions, however, that’s not the dominant paradigm.

Count Them…4 Mobile Money Services Now Live in Tanzania

TigoPesa, created by Tanzania’s fastest-growing mobile network operator, Tigo, is the fourth mobile money service offered in Tanzania. Vodacom Tanzania, a subsidiary of the Vodafone Group, is the leading mobile network operator with a 37% market share.

Microfinance Impact: Are We Asking the Right Questions?

There’s plenty of appetite to further this discussion so that we can learn more about the value that different types of research approaches can bring to answering some fundamental questions.

Highlights from the CGAP Technology Blog – September 2010

We started out September with a virtual conference on the topic of a new CGAP Focus Note Microfinance & Mobile Banking: The Story So Far. We invited guest bloggers from the MFIs featured in the paper to share their learnings from implementing mobile banking in their daily operations. Here SMEP consultant George Kinyanjui explains how group dynamics have changed with the use of M-PESA.

6 Questions for SKS

The Indian microfinance institution, SKS, became the second pure MFI globally to go public by listing its shares on the stock market. SKS is one of the largest microfinance institutions in the world with almost 6 million clients, mostly poor women living in rural areas.

Mobile Money Innovation… Waiting… Waiting…

To some extent, falling hardware prices and mobile data transfer costs make it inevitable that we will see suddenly cheap technology applied to old problems. But isn’t there more we could be doing?