Puddle

Description

"Puddle gives everyday people the opportunity to own a small virtual “bank” with their friends—no fees and no applications. Users decide on interest rates, who can be members, and who can borrow money. The best part: profits made from the interest rates paid by borrowers are distributed among group members.

Puddle is a response from three of social entrepreneurs that have challenged traditional microfinance and suspect lending practices for more than a decade: Ashoka Fellows Solomon Raydán, Jean Claude Rodriguez-Ferrera and Matt Flannery (Kiva co-founder and CEO).

Raydán, Rodriguez-Ferrera and Flannery are supporting the “self-financed movement,” inspired by ancient lending practices generically known as Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAS). Community groups around the world, though very poor, have proven their capacity to organize and sustain their own savings and credit system without having to go through the formal banking system.

Puddle is bringing simplicity, convenience and transparency to a financial model that needs to be changed. It is not intended to replace formal banking. It’s just an alternative for millions of normal people to use modern social networks to support each other financially. And social lending has been proven to actually work. A new study by the University of San Francisco suggests that lending circles are a proven tool for credit improvement and can help to drastically reduce outstanding debt." (http://www.forbes.com/sites/ashoka/2013/08/05/creating-a-line-of-credit-with-friends-the-new-trend-in-finance/)