Edward Cable

Infrastructure: Mifos X vs. Apache Fineract

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As we’ve made the transition to moving development over to our Apache Fineract community, we have added some additional layers of complexity and confusion. We now have multiple mailing lists, multiple issue trackers, and multiple source code repositories. We’ve tried to address these in various webinars and developer meetings but wanted to make clear where you should go to ask questions, where you should go to report issues, and where you should go to grab the source code.

Mifos X versus Apache Fineract

A line of clarity we must first draw is Mifos X vs. Apache Fineract. Prior to the transition to becoming an Apache project, Mifos X was the software platform. From the moment we became an Apache project, Mifos X, the software platform became Apache Fineract. Mifos X now refers to the open source product distribution led by the Mifos Initiative that is built on top of Apache Fineract. Just as Musoni Services provides Musoni System or Conflux Technologies provide Finflux, Mifos X is another distribution on top of Apache Fineract.

The Mifos X distribution is an entire out-of-the-box solution that is a value-added distribution for financial inclusion.  which includes a web app (formerly referred to as community app), a mobile app for field officers, soon a mobile app for clients, reports powered by Pentaho and a data import tool. This distribution is released and available for download via SourceForge from the Mifos.org website. It is directed towards partners and user looking for a readily deployable solution including the Apache Fineract platform, a web user interface, and corresponding mobile apps.

The Apache Fineract is a general core banking system with just the back-end and APIs and no front-end. Developers and Innovators looking to build on Apache Fineract should go directly to GitHub and grab the source code for Apache Fineract (see below).

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Edward Cable

Star Contributor of the Month – Denila Philip

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screen-shot-2017-01-09-at-3-27-15-pmWe’re recognizing Denila Philip, from New Jersey, as our Star Contributor for January 2017. Denila only joined our community in October 2016 but in the short time she’s been here she’s made a huge impact and given generously of her time and skill. Product management is an invaluable contribution that volunteers can make and Denila has been no different. Her work in drafting detailed user stories along with wire frames has greatly accelerated the development efforts for the Android self-service app. Grounded in human-centered design, her plans for the self-service app have given great clarity and a foundation for mobile wallets and other innovation. 
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Edward Cable

Bryan Barnett on The Supervisory Challenges of Financial Inclusion

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bryan-barnettBryan Barnett has been one of the long-time advisors to the Mifos Initiative. We’re fortunate to have his insight and guidance in helping us shape how we can build open standards for innovation and open source digital financial services platforms to improve transparency, increase the effectiveness of regulation and ensure high consumer protection.

Recently he published an informative and eye-opening post to the Alliance for Financial Inclusion blog in his role as Banking Advisor to the U.S. Treasury, Office of Technical Assistance. His post, The Supervisory Challenges of Financial Inclusion, closely examines the growing challenges that regulators faces in both developing the rules and regulations to govern the authorization and operations of financial inclusion providers as well as supervising those institutions to ensure regulations are followed and risks are addressed.

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Edward Cable

Star Contributor of the Month – Gaurav Saini

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We’re recognizing Gaurav Saini, from Chandigarh as our Star Contributor for December 2016. Gaurav has been one of our most active and loyal community members since he graduated from GSOC in 2014. He’s championed the evolution and developoment our Web UI since then. He’s a regular on the mailing lists, is often found speaking about Mifos around the world, and never hesitates to help the community when in need. Gaurav has had a busy 2016 – he started out presenting at TechDays in Amsterdam, mentored two projects for Google Summer of Code, helped a fellow partner in the community by doing hybrid mobile app development, continued to extend our Mifos X web app, attended ApacheCon in Seville, attended the GSOC Mentors Summit in Mountain View, served as a mentor for Google Code-In, and is helping to get our web self-service app off the ground. 
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Edward Cable

Star Contributor of the Month – Pranjal Goswami

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screen-shot-2017-01-09-at-9-54-32-pmWe’re a little behind on recognizing Star Contributors so we’re going catch up for 2016. For November, we’re honoring Pranjal Goswami from Bangalore, India. Pranjal is one of our most gifted and talented community members and it was only in 2016 that we were finally able to get him directly involved with the community. He mentored two students for Google Summer of Code, lending his expertise and graphic design skills to assist in refactoring and re-skinning our web app and also mentoring Adhyan in building out a notifications framework for the web app. He was also chosen to attend the 2016 Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit along with Gaurav. Pranjal will be busy throughout 2017 but we look forward to making him an active contributor to the Apache Fineract community.

Pranjal Goswami – Bangalore, India

Brief Bio (in the words of Pranjal):

Currently working as Head of Product for tnpsuite.com which we ideated during graduation to streamline the process of campus placement drives in India. The platform helps colleges recognise gaps in placements using the student specific analysis.

When not in front of my laptop coding, I like spending time traveling, reading or playing sitar (an Indian classical music instrument)

Relevant Skills & Experience: Full stack developer for three years. Worked on big scale web applications built on Angular JS.

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Luisa Martinez

Quito Chapter launches first Mifos Chapter in Latin America

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Quito Chapter, first meeting.

Last Tuesday, a group of ten people, from different backgrounds, gathered around to have the first meeting of the Quito Chapter, the first Mifos chapter in Latin America. Mifos Chapters are volunteer-led groups to bring together users, partners, and innovators right within their local communities to share ideas, collaborate, and build a flourishing ecosystem. Fill out our Chapter Startup Form if you’d like to launch a chapter in your city. img_5380

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Edward Cable

Partner Spotlight – Flexibility

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This regular blog series will shine the light on some of our top Partners. Not only do we want to recognize them for their accomplishments, we want others to learn from the approach they’ve taken to promote and implement Mifos.

Mifos Partners are one of the most crucial links in our community – they are the driving force that is promoting and supporting Mifos worldwide.  Aside from championing our product and bringing the Mifos technology to new markets, they act as the fundamental bridge feeding in MFI requirements to be developed by the community. Partners don’t stop there as many are also developing and localizing the product to fit their local market.  For all these reasons, we focus our full energy on making Partners successful – they are the primary channel to market, the eyes and ears on the ground, and the entrepreneurial force that will help us sustainably scale. We’d love to recognize your partner organization in this monthly spotlight so please reach out if you’d like to be featured.

Flexibility was one of our first Mifos partners in Latin America. They have championed Mifos all throughout South and Central America. They have been an active part of our online and local community, speaking at regional events and participating at our first Latam Partner Summit. We look forward to working with them and their highly professional team as they take on new opportunities throughout the region.

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Luisa Martinez

Mifos at the Aciamericas Summit in Uruguay

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The Aciamericas event started Tuesday morning. It was powerful to see the gathering of 1200 people from the cooperatives and credit unions sector.

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The day began with an opening ceremony in which Ramón Imperial Zuñiga, Aciamericas president, shared his objectives and points of view on which the cooperative movement should move forward in the next years; the Sustainable Development Goals are at the foundation of the Aciamericas program.

Mifos had its own booth there. The Latam team, along with Argentinian technological partner Flexibility+Ideas, had the chance to spread the Mifos word, explaining what our community is, networking and sharing experiences. Our booth featured the captivating message: “The system banks envy, free in your co-op”

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In the afternoon, we continued the Latam Partners Summit, in which our Community Director, Edward Cable, did a workshop about the community, resources and showcases.

The partners were very interested in this topics, but most especially the showcases with lots of questions coming up and the assurance of some grand new opportunities will come in the future.

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Luisa Martinez

Mifos Latam Partner Summit, First Edition @Montevideo

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Throughout this week, Montevideo will host two major events regarding financial inclusion.

The first one is the Latam Cooperatives Summit, organized by Aciamericas: The International Cooperative Alliance, an independent non-governmental organization that brings together, represents and serves cooperative organizations around the world. Mifos is sponsoring the event but we’ll speak to more of that tomorrow.

The second major event is the First-ever Mifos Latam Partner Summit. For the first time, all technological partners from Latam are gathering in the same place for a time to learn and engage more with our Community, and to discuss and share experiences about themselves and their own projects.

Mifos, Flexibility, iOU FinTech, and Jala Group - attendees of Mifos Latam Partner Summit Read more

Edward Cable

ThitsaWorks Takes Mifos to Myanmar

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The following is a guest post from May Thu Myint, Communications Officer of ThitsaWorks, Inc.

Hello Mifos community!

We’d like to take this moment to introduce ourselves. We are ThitsaWorks, the first Mifos partner to be based in Myanmar. We are delighted to be a part of this great community. We’d like to take this moment to tell you about what we’ve been up to lately.

October was a busy month for ThitsaWorks as we began meeting with various organizations to begin formally introducing ourselves to the MFI community here.

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