Blog

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.

How Should Donors Support Microfinance in Pakistan Post-Flood?

The floods have hit Pakistan hard. Over 2 million homes have been damaged or destroyed, and $1 billion is at risk of being lost by the financial sector in the region most affected.

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?

Social Performance and Financial Performance: Who’s Pulling Who?

The Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) has released a new brief, Microfinance Synergies and Trade-Offs: Social versus Financial Performance Outcomes in 2008.

Enabling International Remittance Services in Georgia

International remittances play an important role in the lives of people across the world, but in Georgia they are of major economic importance, accounting for 9% of the country’s GDP.

Financial Access 2010 Launch

Financial Access 2010 is based on data from financial regulators in 142 countries and provides the first ever framework for global comparisons on financial inclusion.

Pakistan Floods —Branchless Banking Responds

CGAP’s partner in Pakistan, Tameer Microfinance Bank, and their parent company, Telenor Pakistan, have made it possible for people in Pakistan who may not have internet access to make donations to relief organizations using their EasyPaisa mobile banking platform and have removed the usual transfer fees.

Can Mobile Money Be Profitable? We Asked Mobile Money Managers

We surveyed over 20 senior managers from some of the major mobile network operators in over 15 markets. 64 percent of the respondents launched mobile money in the past year. 70 percent claim to already reach over half-a-million customers each with transfers or bill payments or both.

Priorities for Branchless Banking (Part 3 of 3)

Branchless banking is best conceived of as the construction of a network utility. In the third of three blog posts we’ve featured this week, Ignacio emphasizes the applications of this utility for poorer customers.

Priorities for Branchless Banking (Part 2 of 3)

In order for branchless banking to prove to be transformational, it needs to demonstrate not only that it can be scalable (priority #1), but also that it can work for a range of providers and for a range of customer segments – including the poor. These are the two next priorities for branchless banking.

Priorities for Branchless Banking (Part 1 of 3)

It is easy to foresee that in the future normal neighborhood stores will be used by poor people everywhere to conduct basic financial transactions, that technology based on real-time communications will be used to make those transactions reliable and secure, and further that providers will increasingly rely on people’s own mobile phones rather than on deploying cards and dedicated point of sale terminals.

Microfinance & M-banking Virtual Conference Recap

Thank you to everyone who participated in CGAP’s virtual conference over the past two days on the topic of microfinance and mobile banking, coinciding with the release of our latest Focus Note Microfinance and Mobile Banking: The Story So Far.

Are Banks the Bad Guys in the Mobile Money Innovation Debate?

Maybe the next wave of innovation will still be related to the channel, but just a different channel. Is the hype around mobile technology really panning out?

How Can Regulators Protect Funds Held by Mobile Money Providers?

The success of mobile money services such as M-PESA has raised the question of how to regulate nonbanks—most notably mobile network operators, which are often well-placed to reach customers with affordable financial services due to their existing customer base, marketing capabilities, network of agents, physical distribution infrastructure, and experience with high-volume, low-value transactions.