Maana Mobile
Providing financial instruments suited for poor populations in Africa
Description
A mobile phone platform that hosts applications for managing informal lending practices and simple merchant sales. Maana is the bridge between the poor and formal financial services, leveraging an overlooked asset, the mobile phone contact book, to find relevant connections between users for transactions, building a 'trust' database. Lightweight application can be loaded onto 65-75% of installed base of old mobile phones as well as Android and Blackberry.