Since coming to Bangladesh, I’ve heard the term “microfinance” batted around more often than cricket balls. Of course, I have Dr. Mohammed Yunus, the world’s “Banker to the Poor” to thank for that.

Today, however, a friend sent me an interesting link: an initiative called Kiva, in its second year of operation, is asking individuals to lend to poor people directly in developing countries, making it possible that you and I, the ordinary public, can also become “bankers to the poor.”

Their site, Kiva.org uses the international-standard internet payment gateway Paypal to collect money from individual donors and pass it to the entrepreneurs that those lenders choose to support.

There are a few middlemen in the process: Besides Kiva, there is a network of field partners responsible for disbursing and collecting money lent to entrepreneurs and then providing status updates on how the loan’s progress. Kiva says it has chosen this network of almost 60 partners carefully on the basis of transparency, due diligence and previous history.

There is one partner in Bangladesh so far, the Annesha Foundation, although they are currently listed as a new partner and have not received any loans from Kiva as of yet. I’ll be watching closely to track their progress…

Overall, I think it’s a great initiative. By harnessing the power of internet payment gateways to directly fund individual entpreneurs in poor countries, we are using the full capabilities of Internet technology available today to directly change the lives of those who need help. The less middle men, the better.