What can E-services Learn from Microcredit Schemes?

In this report, Miranda Mowbray from HP Laboratories in Bristol, England, determines if and how e-services technologies can help microcredit schemes. She introduces e-services technology as a system that allows web-based services to be connected through e-services organizations, and offers products and services to e-service customers.E-service technologies can be structured as:

• Web portals, where customers and providers interact;
• Brokers, who seek out appropriate providers based on a customer's requirements;
• Composite service providers, which combine existing services with new services to be sold to customers;
• Communities, in which various players interact and collectively make decisions for the e-service organization.

The report concludes that e-services can help microcredit schemes by:

• Using advertisements to seek out capital providers and eventually send information back to the capital providers on how the MFIs' they invested into are performing;
• Helping accountability and transparency within a microfinance organization, thereby making it easier to interact with capital providers;
• Allowing actual microfinance loan clients to benefit by encouraging internet customers to support microenterprises - this will also bring in more money to the community at large.

In the light of these findings, HP has promoted its e-inclusion programs that aim to help excluded off-line communities connect and integrate into the e-service community. This helps developing countries bring their nations into the information age in a more unified and cohesive manner.