Mifos Announces the Launch of Financial Inclusion 2.0

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Seattle, WA ⎯ May 5, 2017 ⎯ The Mifos Initiative (Mifos.org) announced the launch of its Financial Inclusion 2.0 initiative, to continue its mission of bringing financial inclusion to the world’s poor and ending poverty, one line of code at a time.

“There has been great progress in financial inclusion, thanks to the work of the global Mifos community,” said Ed Cable, President/CEO of Mifos. “Now, to help the financial inclusion world move to digital and mobile, we have a powerful new initiative: Financial Inclusion 2.0.”

The Mifos Financial Inclusion 2.0 vision is the fast, low-cost mobile delivery of digital financial services. First published in Spring 2016, the vision statement calls for the creation of a digital financial services platform (DFSP) that can bring the world of financial inclusion to the next level.

In the year since publishing the statement of the vision, Mifos has made tremendous progress:

• Broadened the Mifos.org mission to include the support and development of a global Financial Inclusion 2.0 community
• Defined an architecture for digital financial services (DFS)
• Based on that architecture, developed an open source DFS framework, Mifos Generation 3.
• Put the Mifos X platform under the governance of the Apache Software Foundation as Apache Fineract, where it can serve as a global standard.
• Called for a digital financial services platform (DFSP), to be built on the Apache Fineract framework

In response to our call there is a new solution partner company, Kuelap. Kuelap intends to build a DFSP and to deploy it in the service of financial inclusion. It will be headed by Craig Chelius, formerly the Executive Director of Mifos. “The groundwork and framework provided by Mifos, and our commitment to the same vision, means that Financial Inclusion 2.0 can become a powerful new reality,” said Craig Chelius, CEO of Kuelap.

“Digital financial services will enhance the power the financial inclusion community. A digital financial services platform can catalyze tremendous innovation, and Mifos deployment partners can provide on-the-ground distribution and support,” added Cable.

Individuals interested in learning more about Financial Inclusion 2.0 can download our white paper and  register for our webinar being held on May 18 at 1400GMT.

About Mifos

The Mifos Initiative has long been a pioneer in transformative open source technologies for poverty alleviation. At each stage of evolution of the financial inclusion sector, Mifos has launched a new generation of software to guide the industry’s growth. In 2006, as a project of the Grameen Foundation, Mifos launched the world’s first open source web-based management information system for Grameen-style joint liability group microfinance. In 2011, as the industry broadened its focus to financial inclusion, the Mifos Initiative launched Mifos X, the world’s first truly open API-driven platform for financial inclusion. Now in 2017, the Mifos Initiative, has launched the world’s first open source application framework for digital financial services as Apache Fineract, a project of the Apache Software Foundation. More than 6.5 million clients are being reached through technology solutions powered by Mifos. 

For more information on Mifos and its Financial Inclusion 2.0 vision, see mifos.org.

Media inquiries can be directed to Ed Cable, edcable@mifos.org.

About Kuelap

Kuelap is dedicated to making financial inclusion sustainable through the use of a digital financial services platform.

For more information on Kuelap, see kuelap.io.

Media inquiries can be directed to Craig Chelius, craig.chelius@kuelap.io.