Grameen Foundation has launched the latest release of Mifos, its open source software platform for microfinance. Mifos 1.4 is the first version available in Spanish and also provides support for Firefox 3.0 and integration with banking and other systems. This marks a significant step forward in extending an open platform that gives the entire microfinance industry cost-effective access to technology.
The launch of the Spanish version of Mifos makes it more accessible throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, one of the most advanced and vibrant regions for microfinance. Bankers without Borders volunteers translated the Mifos platform into Spanish. Volunteers offered to translate Mifos into Spanish through Grameen Foundation's Bankers without Borders initiative and the Mifos community. Mifos is now available in four languages with translations into four other Asian languages currently under way.
Engineers at Grameen Foundation's Technology Center in Seattle worked closely with its global community including corporate volunteers from SunGard Technology Services, as well as individual technology contributors from the U.S., Europe and Australia to build the new features and additional product scalability.
"The contributions of our volunteers and strategic partners are vital in helping to build new innovations into Mifos to meet the evolving technology needs of microfinance institutions," said George Conard, executive director of Grameen's Technology for Microfinance Initiative. "This open approach is central to our vision for advancing technology across the industry and supports our goal of reaching 100 million new poor clients through the Mifos platform."
Mifos now includes an application programming interface that enables users to import bank transactions through .xls or .csv file formats. This feature was designed and built for Mifos customer Al Majmoua, a microfinance institution. This paves the way for a plug-in architecture that supports the seamless flow of information between Mifos- and other systems, and external payment networks. For the next release, this API will be extended to integrate Mifos with the rapidly-growing mobile money platform, m-pesa in Kenya.
In addition, Mifos now fully supports Firefox. This will allow microfinance institutions (MFIs) to lower their overall cost of technology investment. Members of SunGard Technology Services in Bangalore, India and other volunteers provided enhancements to its collection sheet entry module that enable greater scalability and more robust transaction processing for hundreds of thousands of microfinance clients. SunGard also helped build greater support for delivering microinsurance services by adding functionality that validates clients' age.
Mifos is Grameen Foundation's award-winning open source information management platform for microfinance. It provides the industry cost-effective access to a flexible technology solution that scales and evolves to help MFIs more efficiently and effectively deliver financial services to the poor. Currently, Mifos is being used in production by eight microfinance institutions across India, Tunisia, Kenya, Philippines and Senegal serving more than 550,000 clients. Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank and the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, is a founding member of Grameen's board of directors and now serves as director emeritus.