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Mobile Money Meets Microcredit: Three Key Decisions in Taking a Concept from Design to Pilot
SAJIDA Foundation in Bangladesh is using evidence from data analytics, business case analysis and client research to improve cross-selling as part of the OPTIX project. Three key evidence-based programmatic decisions were necessary to take a new mobile financial service-based microfinance initiative from the design table to being piloted in the field.
- Categories
- Finance
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Microfinance: Your Inflexible Friend
ON A shelf in Buland Iqbal’s tiny roadside shop, cassette tapes are slowly turning pale in the sun. Nobody wants them these days, even in a dusty suburb in one of India’s poorest states. So Mr Iqbal has branched out. First he moved into renting DVDs, then, more boldly, into pay-television. A loan of 31,000 rupees ($465) from Sonata, a microfinance firm, helped him acquire a few satellite dishes and decoder boxes. It seems like a clear-cut success for microlending. In fact, Mr Iqbal’s loan illustrates why microlending does not work all that well, and how it needs to change.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- fintech, microfinance
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Asian Development Bank partners with Citi to provide US$100 million for microfinance in Asia
Asian Development Bank (ADB) has entered into an agreement with Citi to expand local currency lending to the microfinance sector under the Microfinance Risk Participation and Guarantee Program.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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Survey: Multiple microloans making borrowers highly indebted in Indonesia
Fifty-nine percent of micro borrowers may be indebted as they face difficulties managing their finances to repay their mounting loans, according to a recent survey conducted in four cities in West Java.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Making Microfinance More Effective
For the 2.5 billion people who live on less than $2 per day, shocks such as illness, crop failures, livestock deaths, farming-equipment breakdowns and even wedding or funeral expenses can be enough to tip them, their families, or even an entire community below the poverty line. A major challenge for international development efforts is determining which financial tools provide durable buffers against such setbacks.
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- Uncategorized
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Weekly Roundup: Preventing Zika, Improving Microfinance and Percolating Progress
It’s not too early to start thinking of creative differential pricing strategies that might help poor people afford a Zika vaccine; it's not too late for microfinance to regain some of the allure it's lost in recent years; and the time is just right for East Africa to up its coffee production game. Read all about these items, and more, in our Weekly Roundup.
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- Uncategorized
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State Bank of Pakistan Aims for 50 Percent Financial Inclusion by 2020
State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Deputy Governor Saeed Ahmed said that the central bank was pursuing a three-pronged strategy (3PS) to achieve the goal of 50 percent financial inclusion by the year 2020.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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The G2P Silver Bullet? Not So Fast.
Many governments offer cash transfers to millions of people at or below the poverty line, most of whom are not connected to the formal financial system. If these cash transfers are funneled into bank accounts rather than paid directly out in cash, these people immediately gain an on-ramp to financial services. But there is a resounding dissonance between enthusiasm for this solution, and the evidence to date.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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