More on microfinance
Maybe its a case of confirmation bias, but I was amused to find a full page article in the FTfm this morning with the headline: Doing good and making a profit:
Once carrying the whiff of obscure do-gooding, [microfinance] is being discovered by a growing number of individuals, corporations and organisations, which are viewing it as a financial investment as well as a form of aid. Offering a “double bottom line” of profit and social good, it is especially appealing to capitalist philanthropists such as Bill Gates and Pierre Omidyar both of whom gave large donations to microlending organisations in the past year.
The article also mentions the Calvert Foundation and The Microfinance Information Exchange.
Also in the FT’s Digital Business supplement today, Craig Ehrlich asks us to Let private enterprise bridge the divide as he (more) eloquently and completely makes the point I tried to make below that mobile phones are likely to become the main technology in the developing world for connecting people to the global internet, economy and markets:
Although mobile phones do not have all the features found in a laptop, they can deliver services – voice calls, text messages and, increasingly access to e-mail and the internet – that meet the needs of the hundreds of millions of farmers, fishermen and other small business people.
For these people, who have never had access to telecommunications before, the device they use is far less important than whether it is connected to the wider world. Just like a laptop with an internet connection, mobile phones can quickly link buyers and sellers, co-ordinate vaccinations programmes, help the unemployed find jobs, transfer electronic payments and perform all kinds of other important tasks that normally require a lengthy journey.
February 13th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
[…] The previous posts on microfinance highlighted the idea that the mobile phone is likely to be the platform of choice in delivering financial services to hundreds of millions in the developing markets over the next decade. But this idea does not just apply to developing markets; mobile devices are already important platforms for commerce in developed economies and there is no reason to doubt that the growth of mobile commerce will not continue apace everywhere. Indeed the ability to reduce transaction costs to a point where you can easily and profitably transact micropayments, then you have the basis upon which to compete for any business. As Kid Mercury points out: The best businesses are always those that can profitably serve the least valuable customer; their ability to secure the bottom of the market decreases the likelihood of a competitor coming in and taking the market from underneath them. […]