Jeffrey Sachs, director of the United Nations Millennium Villages Project, was recently interviewed by the US-based CNN news provider regarding the rise of mobile phone ownership in impoverished areas throughout Africa. Continue Reading »

NCR Corporation, a US-based technology company, has developed an automated teller machine (ATM) that uses biometric technologies to make it more accessible to illiterate and semi-literate users. Continue Reading »

Digicel Pacific Limited, a unit of Jamaica-based mobile phone network operator Digicel Group Limited, recently launched an international remittance service called Digicel Mobile Money to allow people living in New Zealand to send money to any Digicel mobile phone in Tonga, Fiji and Samoa [1]. Continue Reading »

Mint Technology Corporation (Mint), a Toronto-based provider of prepaid credit card programs to employers, has created Mint Money, a subsidiary that will seek to offer microfinance loans directly to its existing cardholder base starting during the first quarter of 2012. Continue Reading »

GloMobile Nigeria, a Nigerian telecommunications company, and TransferTo, a Singapore-based global airtime remittances company, have announced the launch of the GloMobile International Airtime Transfer service, which allows for the transfer of prepaid mobile phone airtime between any GloMobile customer in Nigeria and approximately3.6 billion customers of 230 partner mobile network operators in 80 countries. Continue Reading »

MicroLoan Foundation, UK-based nonprofit that works to promote entrepreneurship among women in sub-Saharan Africa, has launched a pilot project in Malawi’s rural Kasungu region that is designed to provide women entrepreneurs with an opportunity to tackle the problem of an unreliable electricity supply [1]. Continue Reading »

Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, a telecommunications provider in Zimbabwe, and Telecel Zimbabwe, a local mobile phone network, have separately launched mobile banking services. Continue Reading »

The team behind Mambu, a web-based software application for microfinance institutions (MFIs), has recently announced the release of Mambu v1.9, the latest version of the software service [1]. Continue Reading »

The Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX), a US-based nonprofit organization that publishes financial and social performance information from microfinance stakeholders, recently announced the launch of a fee-based service that offers the ability to: create a personalized dashboard to track real-time changes in microfinance markets; build virtual microfinance institution portfolios for analysis; access benchmarking and aggregation tools; and access all interim and annual data for approximately 2,000 MFIs in the MIX database [1]. Continue Reading »

United Bank of India (UBI), which is owned by the Indian government, has launched United Mobile Banking, which allows customers to use mobile phones to access services such as balance inquiry, mini-statement, stop-check facility, intra-bank fund transfers and inter-bank fund transfers through the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) payment system. Continue Reading »

Event Name: Technology Innovation for Banks in Growth Economies

Event Date: November 29 – November 30, 2011

Event Location: Kingsway Hall Hotel, 66 Great West Queen Street, Covent Garden, London, United Kingdom Continue Reading »

Kredits, a US-based technology provider to microfinance institutions (MFIs), recently announced that it is providing a “multi-jurisdictional regulatory compliance software solution” to unnamed MFI clients in Kazakhstan, Brazil, India and Madagascar.  The product is soon to be made available to additional countries in Southeast Asia and Africa [1]. Continue Reading »

Bangladesh Bank (BB), the central bank of Bangladesh, has released a set of guidelines on mobile financial services in an effort to enable the banking network to reach unbanked segments of the population in a reliable manner and at low cost. Continue Reading »

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Pakistan’s central banking authority, has reportedly granted approval to Orascom, an international telecommunications company headquartered in Cairo, Egypt, to initiate a mobile microfinance banking service in Pakistan. Continue Reading »

Event Name: The Third International Conference on Institutional and Technological Environment for Microfinance (ITEM3): Cost Management & Social Performance in Microfinance

Event Date: January 4 – January 7, 2012

Event Location: India Habitat Center (Magnolia Hall), Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110003, India Continue Reading »

Microfinance has been successful at bringing solar lighting to India’s rural villages, according to an article in Indian science and environment magazine Down To Earth. Continue Reading »

Kevin Gibbs, a senior software engineer and manager at US-based technology firm Google, has developed an open source application called “Simple MFI” that allows microfinance loan officers to view and enter client data on mobile phones [1]. The application has been designed to run on an Ideos phone, which costs under USD 100, but can run on any phone running Android, a mobile phone operating system designed by Google. Client information can be accessed off-line and data are synchronized automatically with the head office database via the internet. Any microfinance institution can use Simple MFI free of cost. Continue Reading »

Financial Independence Through Entrepreneurship (FITE), an online lending platform designed by US-based microfinance intermediary Kiva, has been established by US-based skincare brand Dermalogica to raise money for on-lending to women worldwide to invest in their businesses. Continue Reading »