Microfinance is on its way to becoming mainstream. This transition creates tremendous opportunities for the service providers involved and, more importantly for the millions of people who will, as a consequence, newly have access to financial services. Yet the shift is neither inevitable nor without risks.While the volume of microfinance services is clearly growing rapidly, the numbers obscure the unevenness of services provision when considered both geographically and from the standpoint of quality. Estimates of the worldwide number of microfinance borrowers range from 30 to 152 million. Yet markets in many countries, including giants such as Brazil and China, remain untapped relative to those in others, such as Bangladesh. Furthermore, many of the clients included in these figures lack access to an adequately tailored or diverse set of services, including not only credit, but also savings, insurance, and payment products. As a consequence, for most of the world's low income populations, access to financial services remains either non-existent or substandard.New applications of technology-improvements in back-end processing and integration with cell phones, ATMs, and the Internet-combined with the entry of large new players, such as major banking institutions, are justifiably creating significant excitement in the field of microfinance. Yet a possibility exists that the resulting disruptions within the industry will ultimately diminish, rather than
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