This is a guest post, from Amitabh Saxena. Amitabh started the Alternative Channels workstream at ACCION in 2006 after spending several years in developing credit card products for Capital One’s Innovation Center. He has worked in strategy and implementation of various channels, particularly prepaid cards and mobile, for ACCION’s partner microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Last week in this space was an insightful blog post on the intersection of Mobile Money and Microfinance. I spent a number of years at a leading microfinance network called ACCION International, managing a new workstream I started called Alternative Channels, and last month wrote a comprehensive paper on how microfinance institutions (MFIs) can be a more active stakeholder in the m-banking space. So why and how can mobile operators approach these entities?

Over the past three decades, microfinance has given millions of people access to financial services for the first time. As such, it’s exciting to watch how mobile money providers and microfinance institutions are starting to work together to improve further the quality and range of financial services available to the poor. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the assets and capabilities of microfinance institutions and mobile money service providers are complementary; we see three specific kinds of collaboration…