The Smartphone Does It Again: Building Credit Scores For Microentrepreneurs

In 2010, when Shivani Siroya started developing an idea for a new microfinance model, predatory lending practices were changing the way people saw microfinance. Pioneer microfinance institutions like Muhammad Yunus’s Grameen Bank were groundbreaking, high social impact endeavors, but in recent years some microlenders had started to use the practice abusively, as a tool to exploit the poor. Ineffective risk assessment was also a factor in loans and payment plans that proved burdensome to borrow...