Benjamin Lyon started CreditSMS, a new outfit that is focused on providing an efficient an accessible platform for microfinance institutions to deliver and track loans via SMS. I’ve been tracking what they’ve been doing since they first popped on the radar two months ago. I’m intrigued by the question: can we decrease the cost for MFI’s with the use of simple SMS technology?
The crux of the inefficiencies can be found in the number, distance and expense of MFI personnel to track and receive payments. Ben states it this way:
“By allowing microloan officers to receive weekly loan repayments via SMS instead of spending time and money to travel to group meetings, MFIs will spend significantly less on fuel and have more time to pursue and manage a larger loan portfolio.”
This might very well be true, and I’m at least interested in seeing the experiment go forward.
A Mobile Money Transfer Directory
In the course of their research they needed to do more discovery on the possible ways to transfer funds with in Africa. This meant embarking on a study of the types of options available by every operator in every country. With that data, they decided to create the Mobile Money Transfer Directory.
This first stage looks like its about creating a simple index of the operator, the money transfer service and a designation of the service. I can see this becoming more dynamic later, with data points like “transaction cost” and “number of merchants”, along with a slew of other pieces of information needed to understand the mobile money transfer systems (and how they differ) in each African country.
[Note: African Signals, the wiki for mobile/web pricing in Africa, turned out quite useful. Ben used that as a starting point in gathering much of his information.]
August 13, 2009 at 12:14 pm
What Ben says is certainly true, and this seems a very natural innovation in the scaling of microfinance. But I wonder whether removing the face to face interaction, similarly to removing the perceived certainty of refinance (which just happened during the crisis), would (likewise) adversely impact the incentive structure of microloans?
I’d love to see this work, it would be a major success, but we’ll have to see how it pans out for CreditSMS.
August 19, 2009 at 2:16 am
The mobile in my view is the most effective gadget in Africa right now. The percentage of people with mobile phones has increased with a big margin in the last few years and this is a good focus for use of the mobile to deliver services and save time, this is a great project. I like the directory as well and I think this is a really viable project. Good work.
August 26, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Great idea. I’d love to see it work.
September 14, 2011 at 4:56 am
Anyone know if the Mobile Money Transfer Directory worked? The link here takes me to creditsms.com so may be a bit dated.
I’m looking for a one stop resource showcasing the mobile money transfer solutions available in different countries on the continent.
Thanks for your help!