Blog

How Agent Network Managers Have Fueled M-PESA’s Success

As CGAP’s new Agent Management Toolkit emphasizes, managing an agent network is complicated. There are a lot of different pieces of the puzzle to get right.

Microcredit Yatra: A Very Indian Journey

Vijay Mahajan, oft described in the Indian media as the “high priest of microfinance,” has set off on a spiritual and literal journey across India to explore the reality of what microcredit has done for poor people.

Boosting the Business Case for Agents

FINO was founded on 13th July, 2006 with the single objective of building technologies to enable financial institutions (FIs) to serve the under-served and the unbanked sector and also to service the technology requirements of entities engaged in servicing the bottom of the pyramid customers.

Debt Stress – A Harmless Cold or a Deadly Virus?

High debt stress holds serious risk for both consumers and for the lending industry.

Over-Indebtedness and Market Forces

The issue of individual over-indebtedness has been around for a long time in microfinance, but the depth and extent of over-indebtedness that has recently emerged in Andhra Pradesh is quite unprecedented.

CGAP Releases Agent Management Toolkit

CGAP’s Agent Management Toolkit aims to demystify the process of building a viable agent network. The toolkit is based on more than a year of research that yielded data on more than 16,000 agents with institutions in Brazil (Banco do Brasil and Banco Postal), India (EKO and FINO), and Kenya (M-PESA).

Driving Fast on Indian Country Roads: Learning from the Crisis

Investors all the way up the value chain of microfinance funding can do a lot to support a safe road to financial inclusion.

Haiti: Strategies for a Multi-Competitor, Multi-Industry Market

Last year, three partnerships involving all of Haiti’s mobile phone operators and some of the country’s biggest banks announced their intention to launch mobile money services.

Over-Indebtedness and Impact

We should not expect the over-indebtedness definition to solve the impact debate just in passing by.

Over-Indebtedness and “Unacceptable Sacrifices”

When we talk about “over-indebtedness,” we usually assume that it’s something that ought to happen pretty rarely if credit is being delivered responsibly.

Microfinance Over-Indebtedness

Whether to protect the social impact on customers or the institutional viability of MFIs, over-indebtedness is crucial to all parties involved.

Highlights and Headlines for January 2011

The news wires have been busy with the recent announcement of partnerships and joint ventures in the Indian branchless banking market. India’s largest public sector bank, the State Bank of India, announced a joint venture with the mobile operator Bharti Airtel to offer mobile banking. Meanwhile, India’s largest private sector bank, ICICI Bank Ltd, announced its tie-up with Vodafone Essar to bank the unbanked via the mobile phone.

The Lurking Challenge of Activating the Inactive Customer

In the past year, several high-profile branchless banking deployments have publicized the fact that they’ve reached more than one million users. Yet what is never publicized in press releases or speeches is the very low number of active users in most deployments. In a recent CGAP survey, 64% of mobile money managers indicated that less than 30% of their registered users are active, and active rates of less than 10% are not uncommon.

Flying Blind on Over-indebtedness?

The point is not to assert that we have a generalized problem with over-indebted microborrowers. The point is that for most markets we simply don’t know.

Are We Over-Indebting Poor Clients? A Challenge for Microcredit

How much do we really know about levels of over-indebtedness, or even what is a reasonable level of debt for a poor household to carry?

Best of the Microfinance Blog 2010

It’s inevitable that a review of the year would highlight the dramatic turn of events in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, as well as other fundamental issues about the provision of financial services for the poor that emerged in such stark light in 2010.

Tackling Fraud in Mobile Banking

CGAP recently surveyed 11 mobile operators to help them better understand how they can ensure that their mobile banking services are not used for money laundering or terrorism financing as well as preventing incidents of fraud against the company.

A Country with a Last Name: Haiti Cherie

The financial hit of losing fixed assets like buildings and equipment and writing-off loans, the difficulty of keeping strong credit discipline with the influx of not-always-so-smart subsidies, the offer of higher salaries to staff by relief organizations and NGOs, and the short attention span of funders for long-term institution building are all real challenges.

Haiti: Could Mobile Banking Be A Legacy of the Earthquake?

Tomorrow will mark the one year anniversary of the terrible earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. While much of the global aid community was focused on disaster response and establishing humanitarian camps for the displaced, there was also a desire to start putting in place financial systems that could be used to help both the immediate aid efforts as well as to establish sustainable long-term financial services for all Haitians.

Legally, How Young Is Too Young to Open a Savings Account?

In most countries, youth under the age of 18 are typically prevented from independently opening a savings account because few banks are willing to offer any financial services without requiring a signed contract.