International Banking is Fun

By Andrew Meyer on February 13, 2008

In May 2007, we did a post on "How to Become an International Banker in Four Easy Steps".

We had just made a microloan through Kiva to an Azerbaijan entrepreneur by the name of Karimbayli Mammadov to help expand his budding welding business. You can see Karimbayli's Kiva page here or just view the screen capture below:

kiva about karimbayli

Today, the Kiva field partner (Komak Credit Union) who dispersed the welding business loan sent us a journal entry from Karimbayli.

His journal entry says that his welding business has been doing very well. He goes on to say that he was able to invest the welding profits in a new venture... breeding sheep!

I must say that is very cool. Good luck on your sheep breeding business, Karimbayli.

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komak credit union field partner Kiva Field Partners like Komak Credit Union in Azerbaijan are what makes Kiva's innovative online business-to-business lending work.

They are the ones who do all the dirty work on the ground selecting loan candidates, dispersing loans, traveling, collecting principal & interest every two weeks or so, more travelling, uploading financial data to Kiva and trying to run a sound microfinance outfit.

Kiva's huge goal is to bridge conventional financial markets with 2nd- and 3rd-tier microfinance instutions.

To do this, they need implement standard accounting practices, build credit profiles and record financial histories etc etc for all the hard-working microfinance organizations out there servicing the Under $2 Crowd.

For those interested in learning more about Kiva you can visit their website or blog.

FYI: Kiva has been doing crazy things lately. They were on Oprah back in September 2007 (with fellow guest Bill Clinton). She crashed their site multiple times and around $300,000 was loaned in two days.

They have loaned around $22,000,000 through the site for all time. As I'm writing this, this week alone $590,000 has been loaned.

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