Introduction
Somewhere remote in a low-income country, in the early hours of the
morning, a woman wakes up and dials her cell phone. She is borrowing a
very small amount of money digitally to buy vegetables in the local market.
During the day, she will sell her inventory in her shop located in the outskirts
of the town. Some customers will pay her using their mobile wallet, others
with cash. She will transfer the cash onto her phone at the shop next door,
where the merchant is also a mobile money agent. At the end of the day, she
will be able to pay back her loan and keep her profit in her mobile wallet.
She can use this mobile money to pay for the gas she uses to cook dinner, as
the utility company has recently connected its payment system to the mobile
money infrastructure. In her daily life, this is huge progress.
Somewhere central in a rich country, just a few weeks before the winter
holiday season, a machine in a chocolate factory breaks down. Without a
new device, the profits during the busiest part of the year will vanish. The
owner tries frantically to obtain credit from his bank to replace his machine.
Even though the factory has operated for several years and has a profitable
track record, the bank is just too busy for this small client and schedules
an appointment in the new year—way too late. A few years ago, this could
have been the end of the business. But a friend told him about an online
lender. Within a week, the online lender had assessed the creditworthiness,
approved the loan, and disbursed the money. The machine was delivered just
in time—two weeks before Christmas. This is a true story that played out in
the city of London.
