Microcredits go mobile as loans for the poor head towards $25bn - Business Analysis & Features, Business - Independent.co.uk

The independent has a interesting article on Microfinance and how it is changing..This got my interest since there is something happening here in India itself..

Microcredits go mobile as loans for the poor head towards $25bn - Business Analysis & Features, Business - Independent.co.uk: "Microfinance – making loans of just $100 to people earning a dollar a day – was pioneered by Bangladeshi Professor Muhammad Yunus (pictured) with his Grameen Bank. So far, banks have lent to microfinance institutions, leaving them to advance money to the poor.

But now hundreds of Indians have become attached to a mobile bank manager, which means they can be in direct contact with lenders. Using smart cards and handheld biometric fingerprint readers, Indian banks such as ICICI and Punjab National are now taking their services direct to India's 350 million once un-bankable people.

These cards, made by an Indian company called Fino, are revolutionising microcredit. 'This has huge implications,' says Moumita Sensarma, head of microfinance in India at ABN Amro. 'The microfinance institutions aren't borrowers from the banks – they are agents to the banks. The record appears instantly on the books.'

ABN, which lends more to Indian microfinance companies than any other bank, began developing an electronic banking system for rural India last year.

Financial institutions have invested $4bn (£2bn) in microfinance, a figure expected to hit $25bn by 2015. Private equity is also"

Further analysis on FINO suggests the following from the site www.fino.co.in

India’s only true Biometric enabled multi-application
Smart Card based e-Payment Sectoral Resource for Banking, Micro Finance, Insurance & Government Sectors

Financial Information Network & Operations Ltd. is a pioneering Application Service Provider (ASP) based out of Mumbai, India. Using cutting edge technologies like Smart cards, Biometrics and a basket of support services,FINO enables Financial Institutions to conceptualize, develop and operationalize projects for Financial Inclusion and support sector initiatives such as General Credit cards (GCC) and Kisan credit cards (KCC) aimed at enabling the rural and remotest un-banked parts of the country to enjoy the benefits of formal financial products and services.

Positioned to act as a sectoral entity and backed by hundreds of man-hours of knowledge capital & Financial Institutions,FINO today is helping many Banks, Micro Finance Institutions, Government entities to manage and support large integrated mission critical pan India project rollouts, at incremental costs, while sharing the benefits arising out of economies of scale with all its business partners.FINO through its contemporary and robust solutions aim to deliver three key benefits to its clients: