[quote name=“wrapper0feather” post=“41158” timestamp=“1386424202”]
[url=https://www.zidisha.org/]https://www.zidisha.org/[/url]

This sort of thing looks very important. They think Feathercoin may be able to help.
[/quote]

Wrapper0feather invited me to this topic.
I have been a lender at zidisha for over a year. They have been growing fast.
A similar site is kiva.org (have no experience with them).
For a more complete list: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Microfinance_organizations]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Microfinance_organizations[/url]

Maybe I was misunderstood when I mentioned zidisha. I am not a representative for them, nor am I living in Africa, I just wanted to mention that cryptocurrency could be(come) useful for these organizations.
Based on the feedback I have seen on the zidisha platform, they sometimes seem to struggle to get the money to certain countries, and the borrowers may have to travel 50km to make a repayment on their loan.
In countries like Kenya, mobile payment systems have been growing very fast ( see m-pesa: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-pesa]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-pesa[/url]), which shows the enormous potential for micro-payment systems in the 3rd world, but in many other countries there still isn’t anything like that.

Can cryptocurrencies get a foot in the door? Maybe Kenya would be the best place to start, because the population is already used to mobile payments, and there is already a network of mpesa agents where people go to deposit or withdraw from their mobile wallet. Maybe these local agents can be convinced to start a similar service for ftc.

I think the big challenge will be to make ftc safe and practical for the them to use. To explain local farmers how to encrypt their ftc wallet may be a bridge too far.

B

Fwiw, I have been participating on the Zidisha.org microlending community for over a year and I notice there are several problems that ftc might help to address. The organization often struggles to get money into these poorer countries and to the lenders, and the lenders may have to travel 50km to visit a bank to make a monthly payment. They have access to internet and mobile phones but not to financial services that are easy to use.
I think microlending organizations would be very open to viable micro payment systems.

My first post.
I don’t own any cryptocurrencies, but have some ideas and hope to learn a few things…

B