Collaborative Finance

Collaborative Finance is an online sharing marketplace empowering people to share services, stuff, spaces, time, talent.

Formal financial intermediaries, such as commercial banks, usually refuse to serve poor households and micro-enterprises because of the high cost of small transactions, lack of traditional collateral, lack of basic requirements for financing and geographic isolation. By doing so, these institutions ignore the enormous potential in talents and entrepreneurship of this stratum of society. Providing access to financial services will stimulate the independence and self-development of poor households and micro-entrepreneurs. This will help not only to improve poor people’s economic condition, but also to provide a way to maintain or improve their quality of life in the face of uncertainty. Moreover, gaining access to financial services is a critical step in connecting the poor to a broader economic life and in building the confidence for them to play a role in the larger community.