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Posted to dev@fineract.apache.org by Nyi Aye <ny...@thitsaworks.com> on 2017/07/26 07:21:05 UTC
Mifos I/O (Generation 3 of Mifos) as part of Apache Fineract Project
Dear Apache Fineract community,
Greetings from Yangon. My name is Nyi Aye. I lead ThitsaWorks, an outfit based in Myanmar, that provide financial technology solutions for Microfinance Institutions to run effective operations and to manage risks using Mifos X.
We have been following the development of Mifos I/O (Generation 3 of Mifos) closely and are pleased with the architecture and design we've seen and evaluated from the Mifos I/O GitHub page -https://github.com/mifosio. We are witnessing tremendous growth in mobile penetration in Myanmar and we are encouraged by the promising opportunities that are possible on top of this next generation architecture as presented in the Financial Inclusion 2.0 webinar led by the Mifos Initiative.
We want to begin building custom solutions on top of the framework but can't do this until the framework is formally part of Apache Fineract.
Please let us know when the framework will be part of Apache Fineract and how we can be a part of this process. We would like to do our part in contributing as individuals so are eager for it to be part of the Apache Fineract project.
Kind regards,
Nyi
Nyi Nyein Aye
CEO & Managing Director
ThitsaWorks Solutions Myanmar Co., Ltd.
Tel: +95-9965732351 (Myanmar)
Tel: +1-347-255 9226 (US)
Email: nyi.aye@thitsaworks.com
Web: www.thitsaworks.com<http://www.thitsaworks.com/>
Facebook: fb.me/thitsaworks<http://fb.me/thitsaworks>
Twitter: twitter.com/thitsaworks<http://www.twitter.com/thitsaworks>
Re: Mifos I/O (Generation 3 of Mifos) as part of Apache Fineract Project
Posted by Ed Cable <ed...@mifos.org>.
Hi Nyi,
Thank you for showing your interest in Generation 3. I know that both you
and Thynn have been keenly following its progress. I've seen firsthand with
you in Yangon how Generation 3 can be a powerful tool to enable
mobile-first innovation in a market like Myanmar where smartphone adoption
is so widespread.
I'm eager to work with you and the rest of the community to help you bring
digital financial service platforms to your region.
If you have any suggestions on tools or resources, you'd like to provide or
like the community to provide to help enable the transition of Generation
3, please share them at this wiki page:
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FINERACT/Fineract+2.0+Introduction
If you need karma to edit the wiki, please let me know.
Ed
On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 12:21 AM, Nyi Aye <ny...@thitsaworks.com> wrote:
> Dear Apache Fineract community,
>
>
>
> Greetings from Yangon. My name is Nyi Aye. I lead ThitsaWorks, an outfit
> based in Myanmar, that provide financial technology solutions for
> Microfinance Institutions to run effective operations and to manage risks
> using Mifos X.
>
>
>
> We have been following the development of Mifos I/O (Generation 3 of
> Mifos) closely and are pleased with the architecture and design we've seen
> and evaluated from the Mifos I/O GitHub page -https://github.com/mifosio.
> We are witnessing tremendous growth in mobile penetration in Myanmar and we
> are encouraged by the promising opportunities that are possible on top of
> this next generation architecture as presented in the Financial Inclusion
> 2.0 webinar led by the Mifos Initiative.
>
>
>
> We want to begin building custom solutions on top of the framework but
> can't do this until the framework is formally part of Apache Fineract.
>
>
>
> Please let us know when the framework will be part of Apache Fineract and
> how we can be a part of this process. We would like to do our part in
> contributing as individuals so are eager for it to be part of the Apache
> Fineract project.
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Nyi
>
>
> Nyi Nyein Aye
>
> CEO & Managing Director
>
> ThitsaWorks Solutions Myanmar Co., Ltd.
>
> Tel: +95-9965732351 (Myanmar)
>
> Tel: +1-347-255 9226 (US)
>
> Email: nyi.aye@thitsaworks.com
>
> Web: www.thitsaworks.com<http://www.thitsaworks.com/>
>
> Facebook: fb.me/thitsaworks<http://fb.me/thitsaworks>
>
> Twitter: twitter.com/thitsaworks<http://www.twitter.com/thitsaworks>
>
>
--
*Ed Cable*
President/CEO, Mifos Initiative
edcable@mifos.org | Skype: edcable | Mobile: +1.484.477.8649
*Collectively Creating a World of 3 Billion Maries | *http://mifos.org
<http://facebook.com/mifos> <http://www.twitter.com/mifos>
Re: Mifos I/O (Generation 3 of Mifos) as part of Apache Fineract
Project
Posted by Nyi Aye <ny...@thitsaworks.com>.
Dear Myrle,
Many thanks for your response and apologies for the delay in getting back to you. Please see my response inline.
Kind regards,
Nyi
Nyi Nyein Aye
CEO & Managing Director
ThitsaWorks Solutions Myanmar Co., Ltd.
Tel: +95-9965732351 (Myanmar)
Tel: +1-347-255 9226 (US)
Email: nyi.aye@thitsaworks.com
Web: www.thitsaworks.com<http://www.thitsaworks.com>
Facebook: fb.me/thitsaworks<http://fb.me/thitsaworks>
Twitter: twitter.com/thitsaworks<http://www.twitter.com/thitsaworks>
________________________________
From: Myrle Krantz <my...@apache.org>
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2017 5:30 PM
To: dev@fineract.apache.org
Subject: Re: Mifos I/O (Generation 3 of Mifos) as part of Apache Fineract Project
On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 9:21 AM, Nyi Aye <ny...@thitsaworks.com> wrote:
> Dear Apache Fineract community,
Hello Nyi,
Glad to have you here. It's truly awesome that ThitsaWorks is
supporting microfinance in Myanmar.
ThitsaWorks: Thanks for the welcome and for your support Myrle. I missed this email and apologize for the delay in responding to you.
> Greetings from Yangon. My name is Nyi Aye. I lead ThitsaWorks, an outfit based in Myanmar, that provide financial technology solutions for Microfinance Institutions to run effective operations and to manage risks using Mifos X.
That sounds very interesting. What scale are you hoping to achieve?
How many offices? How many accounts? What transaction rate?
ThitsaWorks: We have just started our operations in Myanmar so our footprint is still small but we hope to grow the number of Mifos deployments as MFIs in Myanmar expand their operations. Many of them are only now beginning to consider using an MIS to run their operations.
What do you mean by "manage risks"? Is that a reference to KYC logic,
or are you talking about insurance products, or is this a reference to
security architecture?
ThitsaWorks: We would like to help MFIs with managing their credit risk. A long-term plan of ours is to help MFIs assess creditworthiness of their clients, access a database of blacklisted clients and perform other credit data analysis.
What features are you currently using in MifosX? Have you made any
shift towards Apache Fineract as a back end?
ThitsaWorks: We are using all available features contained in the standard distribution and we have not made any shift towards Apache Fineract.
Is there anything "special" about microfinance lending in Myanmar that
presents you with challenges when using a tool like MifosX?
ThitsaWorks: There are challenges but I don't think they are "special" for Myanmar. One challenge that we face is that regulatory reports required by the supervisory body for MFIs keep changing and it's taxing for us to analyze what they are actually asking, analyze how to get that data from Mifos and then customizing or creating new reports only to receive a new set of requirements. This has happened three times in the past 6 months. Another major challenge we foresee is with the quality of data as MFIs start to digitize their data. Many MFIs have so far kept their books in Myanmar language and translating the names into English with many different ways of spelling Burmese names is an issue as we try to put in place validation. We have not even reached a point where we will consolidate data from multiple MFIs, perhaps through a credit bureau.
> We have been following the development of Mifos I/O (Generation 3 of Mifos) closely and are pleased with the architecture and design we've seen and evaluated from the Mifos I/O GitHub page -https://github.com/mifosio. We are witnessing tremendous growth in mobile penetration in Myanmar and we are encouraged by the promising opportunities that are possible on top of this next generation architecture as presented in the Financial Inclusion 2.0 webinar led by the Mifos Initiative.
Increasing mobile usage world-wide does provide some very exciting
opportunities. Is it just feature phone usage increasing, or is there
significant growth in smart phone usage in Myanmar as well? Do you
intend to target UMTS, Android, Windows, or iOS, or some combination?
ThitsaWorks: In Myanmar, we are seeing a significant growth in mobile phone penetration (there are some reports that the penetration rate is now over 100% of population) as well as a very high ratio of smart phones among these new mobile users. As we are very late to the mobile game, we jumped straight into smartphone and skipped the feature phones. The ratio of smart phones vs. all mobile phone users (80%) is putting Myanmar in an interesting category. With a very high financially excluded population (80-90%) and a very high smart phone usage (80%) and 70% of the population living in rural areas where infrastructure is poor, there is a perfect use-case for what digital financial service can do. This growth happened in the last 3-4 years. Most of the users are Android users, so I think that's the main target but still there is a large user-base of featured phones (or those who are not using data plans even if they have smart phones) in the bottom of the pyramid so I can still imagine a lot of financial transactions happening over USSD.
Also, this sounds like you're most interested in self-service or field
agent operations. Is that correct? How important is offline-first in
Myanmar? Do you have good broadband coverage, or is it patchy? What
solutions are you using for this today?
ThitsaWorks: Most MFIs in Myanmar are currently operating out of the largest cities and servicing surrounding areas. But 70% of the population live in rural areas and information and communication technology will be key to reach them. Mifos on the go, used by loan officers in the field will be the critical piece in this phase. The coverage is getting better and Telcos have promised that it will improve even further. There is currently a race to building towers. I am not sure it will be a broadband coverage but as there is more and more demand for audio and video (thanks to Facebook) via mobile phones, there is definitely a plan to increase the bandwidth. Currently, most MFIs, even if they use a MIS like Mifos, will print their collection sheets before going to the field, collecting the money and then entering this information back at the office.
> We want to begin building custom solutions on top of the framework but can't do this until the framework is formally part of Apache Fineract.
What kinds of custom solutions would you like to build with Gen 3?
Which features or properties of the architecture of Gen 3 interest you
the most?
ThitsaWorks: We would like to learn more about Gen 3 and its capabilities to understand its potential and how we could take advantage of it. One interest is for the ability to integrate with mobile wallets, external credit scores, etc.
> Please let us know when the framework will be part of Apache Fineract and how we can be a part of this process. We would like to do our part in contributing as individuals so are eager for it to be part of the Apache Fineract project.
I'm glad to hear that you would like to contribute. Are we talking
about code contributions? Which area of feature development do you
and your team hope to contribute in? What kinds of assistance do you
believe you all will need before you can become effective
contributors? I would like to understand how I can help you.
ThitsaWorks: We are interested in mobile wallet/payment solution as well as integration with credit score and credit bureau systems. We currently have no spare resources to contribute with coding but we can review this as needed.
Many thanks, Myrle.
Best Regards,
Myrle
Re: Mifos I/O (Generation 3 of Mifos) as part of Apache Fineract Project
Posted by Myrle Krantz <my...@apache.org>.
On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 9:21 AM, Nyi Aye <ny...@thitsaworks.com> wrote:
> Dear Apache Fineract community,
Hello Nyi,
Glad to have you here. It's truly awesome that ThitsaWorks is
supporting microfinance in Myanmar.
> Greetings from Yangon. My name is Nyi Aye. I lead ThitsaWorks, an outfit based in Myanmar, that provide financial technology solutions for Microfinance Institutions to run effective operations and to manage risks using Mifos X.
That sounds very interesting. What scale are you hoping to achieve?
How many offices? How many accounts? What transaction rate?
What do you mean by "manage risks"? Is that a reference to KYC logic,
or are you talking about insurance products, or is this a reference to
security architecture?
What features are you currently using in MifosX? Have you made any
shift towards Apache Fineract as a back end?
Is there anything "special" about microfinance lending in Myanmar that
presents you with challenges when using a tool like MifosX?
> We have been following the development of Mifos I/O (Generation 3 of Mifos) closely and are pleased with the architecture and design we've seen and evaluated from the Mifos I/O GitHub page -https://github.com/mifosio. We are witnessing tremendous growth in mobile penetration in Myanmar and we are encouraged by the promising opportunities that are possible on top of this next generation architecture as presented in the Financial Inclusion 2.0 webinar led by the Mifos Initiative.
Increasing mobile usage world-wide does provide some very exciting
opportunities. Is it just feature phone usage increasing, or is there
significant growth in smart phone usage in Myanmar as well? Do you
intend to target UMTS, Android, Windows, or iOS, or some combination?
Also, this sounds like you're most interested in self-service or field
agent operations. Is that correct? How important is offline-first in
Myanmar? Do you have good broadband coverage, or is it patchy? What
solutions are you using for this today?
> We want to begin building custom solutions on top of the framework but can't do this until the framework is formally part of Apache Fineract.
What kinds of custom solutions would you like to build with Gen 3?
Which features or properties of the architecture of Gen 3 interest you
the most?
> Please let us know when the framework will be part of Apache Fineract and how we can be a part of this process. We would like to do our part in contributing as individuals so are eager for it to be part of the Apache Fineract project.
I'm glad to hear that you would like to contribute. Are we talking
about code contributions? Which area of feature development do you
and your team hope to contribute in? What kinds of assistance do you
believe you all will need before you can become effective
contributors? I would like to understand how I can help you.
Best Regards,
Myrle