FINABIEN wins Future of Government Award for Open Source Re-Use of Mifos X for Créditos para El Bienestar
FINABIEN was recently selected as the winner of the prestigious 2025 Future of Government Award for Open Source Reuse of Mifos X for its Créditos para el Bienestar program providing fully digitized loans to the most vulnerable MSMEs throughout all of Mexico.
We’re honored it received this distinction amidst other powerful solutions that were shortlisted as highly commended for the award including the VENEEM Burkina Faso project for its use of OpenCRVS, deployment and integration of Mojaloop for inclusive payment system across Africa led by ThitsaWorks Pte Ltd and the SpeedyMesh solution built on top of the Digital One Health Platform
Mifos had the pleasure of nominating the pioneering team at FINABIEN which powered it’s innovative last-mile lending program on top of Mifos X with the support of Infotec and local Mifos Partner Fintecheando. Thank you to Public Digital, AWS, and UNDP and the selection committee for this well-deserved recognition that showcases how core banking and loan management can be a powerful DPI uniting the public and private sector to disseminate support to individuals and MSMEs.
Since integrating Mifos X, Mexico’s Créditos para el Bienestar (‘Credits for wellbeing’) program has been able to make a fully digitised, self-service lending process available to the poorest, unbanked people in Mexico.
The biggest blockers to the Mexican government administering aid to vulnerable groups through loans has been the lack of systems and distribution channels available. However, the reuse and adaptation of Mifos X has provided a robust system that has increased visibility and reduced corruption.
Its easy integration and customisation has ensured quick delivery in line with Mexico’s policies for security, accountability and traceability.
Open source reuse is when a creation that was designed, built, written and then shared by one team, is reconfigured or adapted by another team so it can be used in a different context. We want to celebrate those in the public sector who are building on shared knowledge because working in this way leads to less duplication of time, effort and money, and allows quicker delivery and impact.
Definition of Open Source Re-Use Category
Benefits of Open Source Reuse
By re-using and adapting a proven open source core banking solution like Mifos X, FINABIEN was able to achieve the following benefits including scalability to support millions of loans, lower costs, reduced corruption ensuring aid to recipients, improved speed & quality of service to beneficiaries, agile aid in times of disaster, and a re-usable lending platform for other agencies.
- Fully Digitized Lending Process – FINABIEN was able to focus on building a digitized self-service lending process on top of Mifos X with a paperless online application with loans disbursed onto the FINABIEN card or at one of the 1700+ branches all fully connected with a an electronic loan folder.
- Scale & Rapid Deployment: Given Mifos X is battle-tested by governments, banks & fintechs worldwide, the government could rapidly implement its feature set, deploy at scale & maintain the system in production 24×7 for 1.8 million existing active loans & 135,822 new loans.
- Reduced Cost – Mifos’ virtuous cycle of upstream development across its global community enabled the government to deliver the solution quickly for the needs of the people and aligned with policies for security, accountability & traceability. Thousands of development hours saved & reduced licensing cost enabled investment for tech and knowledge for societal benefits including educational programs for careers for OSS software developers.
- Sovereignty of the Solution – Re-using OSS also enabled sovereignty of the solution as it’s hosted within the Mexican federal government’s own data center.
Loan Management & Core Banking as DPI
Mexico is unique in that the government can directly administer aid via loans to vulnerable populations without commercial banks as intermediaries. Key barriers prohibiting governments from doing this have typically been a lack of systems & distribution channels and corruption. Re-using OSS addressed these by providing a robust system connecting the 1700+ branches, reducing corruption via the electronic loan account folder viewable across branches enabling this fully digitized self-service lending process with disbursement on the Finabien card and accessible via the FINABIEN app.
The ability to power multiple lending use cases for a variety of different departments and ministries has been evident in a number of different ways as lending has expanded beyond just the Tandas para el Bienestar program. The government has a robust loan management system to rapidly administer aid like Esperanza loans for Hurricane Otis & via innovative programs like its recent loan product offering for EV cars to speed up adoption of Electric Vehicles (EVs) for micromobility produced in Mexico.