Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Re: [MFP] Controversial blogs on Opportunity and MyBucks partnership

 

Helo Frans,


The dilemma is that the industry wants to do everything possible to avoid discussion of these issues.  Lots of people know this is going on, lots of people discuss it quietly, but there is a consensus not to raise these issues opening or publicly.  That's the reason for my blog…. to get this information out there and promote discussion.

Opportunity has the right to respond to my blog, as well as Daniel and Gabriela's blog.  Will they?  I expect they will not, unless there is a large volume of discussion about this in the social media and a large number of comments on the Next Billion website.  If this looks like it is blowing over, Opportunity will almost certainly stay silent.

* So if you're on LinkedIIn, post a link to the blog. 

* Tweet something about the blog, and include  in the tweet

* Write some comments on the two blogs:



* Put something on FaceBook about this

My conclusions are very different from those of Daniel and Gabriela.  So who's right?

Read carefully the blogs that are there… click the links and read the data.  Everything is very carefully documented due to the importance of the issues .  Look around and see what other information you can find on the Opportunity sale or on MyBucks.  Everything I put in the blog I very carefully checked.  There is much more information I collected that didn't make it into the blog.

If a few days pass and we move on to other topics, we're almost certain to see this slip back into obscurity.

Chuck Waterfield


On Jun 21, 2016, at 12:32 PM, Frans Purnama franspurnama@yahoo.com [MicrofinancePractice] <MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com> wrote:


Hi Chuck,

‎Thank you to point the potential in microfinance Chuck. 

What can we do  ? , just discus the issues? , let discuss as a start..

Best,
Frans

Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Telkomsel network.
From: Jami Solli jamisolli@gmail.com [MicrofinancePractice]
Sent: Tuesday, 21 June 2016 23:10
Subject: Re: [MFP] Controversial blogs on Opportunity and MyBucks partnership

 

Thanks Chuck for flagging this.  I would have missed this otherwise.  
best,
Jami

On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 9:36 AM, Chuck Waterfield chuck.waterfield@gmail.com [MicrofinancePractice] <MicrofinancePractice@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
 

Dear colleagues,

Back in November 2015, there was a rather quiet announcement about how Opportunity had sold six of its African banks to MyBucks.com, a fintech lender coming out of the South African payday lender environment.  In several African countries, MyBucks lends at 30% and 40% a month to those who can prove employment.  It seemed a problematic partnership to many of us, but there was virtually no public discussion.

That silence has been broken.

Three weeks ago, the CEO of Opportunity, Vicki Escarra, did an interview with NextBillion to discuss the sale:


That has been followed up today by two blogs.  One of them, written by me, expresses concerns about the financial status of the banks and the practice of MyBucks:


A second, written by Daniel Rozas and Gabriela Erice Garcia, reviews the positive and negative and ends with an optimistic note:


I'd strongly encourage you to read through all of this material and enter into the discussion.  It is one of the most significant microfinance news events of recent years, it potentially foreshadows directions the industry is moving in, and it has been completely ignored by all of us.  That needs to change.

Chuck Waterfield







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Posted by: Chuck Waterfield <chuck.waterfield@gmail.com>
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