We kicked off July in China, with my interview with Wokai founder Casey Wilson:

One interesting challenge that we navigate on a daily basis operating in China is the regulatory landscape. Microfinance was late to develop in China, only starting in 1994, in contrast to 1976 in Bangladesh. Regulations prohibit MFIs from accessing debt and equity investment, leaving them completely reliant on donor funding which is decreasing rapidly as the outside world sees China as an economic superpower rather than a country in need of aid.

When we first started Wokai, we aimed to create a Kiva-like model in which lenders from all over the world could lend no interest capital that when then go to our MFI Field Partners, and, finally, be lent out to the end borrowers on the ground. Once the borrowers repaid their loans to our Field Partners, the capital would then be repaid to lenders online.

CGAP and the Grameen Foundation hosted a virtual conference around information technology for microfinance. Lauren Braniff and Xavier Faz put the issue of IT into perspective:

As concerns grow in the microfinance community about delinquency crises, responsible finance, client over indebtedness, and social performance management, it becomes increasingly important for MFIs to have solid systems in place to manage their business and understand clients.

George Conard and Charlene Balick of the Grameen Foundation asked why we can’t all just get along:

How can the working relationship between vendors and MFIs be improved – especially with an eye to avoiding large cost overruns and enabling MFIs to effectively use back end systems to achieve growth and operational efficiencies and cost reduction goals?

Jan Chipchase concluded his series on how poor people use mobile money - taking on the issues of device ownership, sporadic electricity, and literacy rates:

Every day millions of illiterate users are able to use mobile phones to receive and make calls – many start by inputting phone numbers written on scraps of paper, a common form of ‘address book’ amongst this user group, before migrating to using the call log as a form of self-generating address book. Problems using the phone generally start to occur with more complex tasks, in particular anything that requires managing or editing.

-Jim Rosenberg