Matthew Flannery, Kiva’s founder and CEO, had an excellent post yesterday about why they don’t offer disintermediated loans like Prosper.com and the UK’s Ropa.
Disintermediated loans meaning loans that don’t need third party involvement like Kiva’s MFI partners. He also mentions in the post that in the future they would like to offer disintermediated loans directly to entrepreneurs via cell phones. BUZZYEAH is a huge proponent of this idea.
Cell phone banking has made a huge splash in eastern African countries, especially among low-income users, as I covered here and here. So, Matthew isn’t far off from suggesting that Kiva may one day offer loans directly to their highlighted businesses via cell phones.
