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INTERVIEW: Muhammad Yunus discusses the Indian microfinance industry
The Nobel laureate and founder of microfinance pioneer Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank says MFIs in India could be greedy and tapping the capital market or raising loans from private equity funds is a bad idea.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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Chinese Phone Giant Xiaomi Tests Mobile Wallet That Pays Interest
Chinese phone giant Xiaomi has introduced a new wrinkle on the mobile wallet: A portable account that bears interest.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Asia Pacific
- Tags
- mobile finance
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Asia Steps Up Efforts to Reach the ‘Unbanked’
Across Asia, governments are experimenting with novel ways to widen access to financial services, from using mobile technology for transfers to allowing retail stores to take deposits in remote areas.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Microfinance Goes Digital: Opportunities and challenges in enabling pro-poor financial institutions to connect to the digital ecosystem
Mobile financial services are finally moving beyond payments, with 26 mobile savings and 37 mobile credit services now live. But in spite of this progress, smaller microfinance institutions and other pro-poor organizations have been forced to watch from the sidelines for lack of resources. Grameen Foundation addresses this and other challenges in the first post in a series on what it takes for an MFI to go digital.
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- Uncategorized
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Financial Inclusion in Focus in India, but Bank Loans to Micro Sector Fall 5.5%
State-run banks may have created a record with opening of Jan Dhan accounts, but when it comes to lending to the poor, they are actually faltering. Bank loans to the micro sector, the target group of the government's financial inclusion drive and Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), have fallen 5.5% over the last 14 months, according to data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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Orange, Airtel Join Forces to Enable International Money Transfers in West Africa
Customers of Orange Money in Côte d’Ivoire can now use their mobile phones to send money to customers of Airtel Money in Burkina Faso, and vice versa.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- digital payments
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Interview: Stuart Hart on How Indian Microfinance Institutions Can Improve Their Negative Image
In the second part of his interview to the Chairman of Indian Council of Competitiveness, Amit Kapoor, global thinker and Founder and President of Enterprise for a Sustainable World, a non-profit organisation dedicated to helping businesses make the transition to sustainability, Stuart Hart talks about how Indian micro finance institutions can work towards cleaning their negative image.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- microfinance
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