Benin has a lively and diversified microfinance sector.

While much progress has been made in developing a viable, commercial microfinance sector in the last few decades, several issues remain that need to be addressed before the industry will be able to satisfy massive worldwide demand.

* Microfinance Information Exchange ( MIX ), a non-profit business information provider in the microfinance sector

In the second year the students specialize in developing special skills required by managers in the agribusiness sector and its sub-sectors like emerging food, retail, microfinance and global supply chain.

Using cutting edge technologies like smart cards, biometrics and a basket of support services, FINO enables financial institutions to conceptualise, develop and operationalise projects to support sector initiatives in microfinance and livelihoods.

* XacBank-XacBank is a community development bank and microfinance institution headquartered in Ulaanbaatar, with a nation-wide network of 100 offices and 1309 staff as of June 2012.

A Bangladeshi NGO, BRAC is a part of the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan particularly in microfinance and in 2007 the Afghan ambassador to Bangladesh, Ahmed Karim Nawabi had stated that Afghanistan is interested in recruiting manpower from Bangladesh.

However, Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank and microfinance banking, and other supporters of microfinance, argue that the lack of collateral and lack of excessive interest in micro-lending is consistent with the Islamic prohibition of usury ( riba ).

Microcredit is a division of microfinance, which is the provision of a wider range of financial services, especially savings accounts, to the poor.

Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is the oldest and probably best-known microfinance institution in the world.

" Bateman concludes that " The international development community is now faced with the reality that, overall, microfinance has been a development policy blunder of quite historic proportions.

Sociologist Jonathan H. Westover, Ph. D. found that much of the evidence on the effectiveness of microfinance for alleviating poverty is based in anecdotal reports or case studies.

Rather, the principal reason for the high cost of microcredit loans is the high transaction cost of traditional microfinance operations relative to loan size.

* There is also GrameenPhone, which fused mobile telephony with Grameen Bank's microfinance program to give Bangladeshi villagers access to communication.

In some regions, for example Southern Africa, microfinance is used to describe the supply of financial services to low-income employees, which however is closer to the retail finance model prevalent in mainstream banking.

For some, microfinance is a movement whose object is " a world in which as many poor and near-poor households as possible have permanent access to an appropriate range of high quality financial services, including not just credit but also savings, insurance, and fund transfers.

For others, microfinance is a way to promote economic development, employment and growth through the support of micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Although microcredit is one of the aspects of microfinance, conflation of the two terms is endemic in public discourse.

Due to the broad range of microfinance services, it is difficult to assess impact, and very few studies have tried to assess its full impact.

The industry has been growing rapidly, and concerns have arisen that the rate of capital flowing into microfinance is a potential risk unless managed well.

In the 2000s, the microfinance industry's objective is to satisfy the unmet demand on a much larger scale, and to play a role in reducing poverty.

One of the principal challenges of microfinance is providing small loans at an affordable cost.

Rather, the main reason for the high cost of microfinance loans is the high transaction cost of traditional microfinance operations relative to loan size.

However, annual rates charged to clients are higher, as they also include local inflation and the bad debt expenses of the microfinance institution.

The issuing of stocks through IPOs ( Initial Public Offerings ) by microfinance institutions has also been criticized.

Many microfinance institutions also offer savings facilities, such as Banco Palma in Brazil shown here.

There has been a long-standing debate over the sharpness of the trade-off between ' outreach ' ( the ability of a microfinance institution to reach poorer and more remote people ) and its ' sustainability ' ( its ability to cover its operating costs — and possibly also its costs of serving new clients — from its operating revenues ).

This is true not only for individual institutions, but also for governments engaged in developing national microfinance systems.

However, annual rates charged to clients are higher, as they also include local inflation and the bad debt expenses of the microfinance institution.

The organization is also the majority owner and primary operator of two microfinance institutions, ACCION Microfinanças in Manaus, Brazil and ACCION Microfinance China in Chifeng, China.

Hampton has also actively aided countries such as Peru with charity, by establishing a microfinance bank helping those suffering economic hardship to set up small businesses.

He has also been actively involved in supporting microfinance as a tool for development, including recent appearances in support of Opportunity International.

Triodos also has an active international department, supporting microfinance initiatives across the developing world.

Perhaps influenced by traditional Western views about usury, the role of the traditional moneylender has been subject to much criticism, especially in the early stages of modern microfinance.

With appropriate regulation and supervision, each of these institutional types can bring leverage to solving the microfinance problem.

This approach is embraced by organizations such as the Gamelan Council seeking to empower entrepreneurs ( e. g., through microfinance initiatives ).

Data from 2003 by the Central Bank stated a penetration rate of microfinance services of almost 60 percent.

The Central Bank of the West African States ( BCEAO ) reports that about 41 microfinance institutions ( MFIs ) operate in the country, serving a total of 800, 000 customers.

One of the leading microfinance lenders for Central America, the Katalysis Bootstrap Fund, relocated to the University of Pacific campus in 2006.

ACCION works with 27 partner microfinance institutions in South America, Central America, the United States, Africa and Asia.

ACCION worked exclusively with microfinance institutions in South and Central America until 1991, when it piloted a microfinance program for entrepreneurs in Brooklyn, NY.