microcredit
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Novica Built the Handmade Marketplace Etsy Couldn't: With Warehouses, Microloans and 27 Years of Patience
The Santa Monica company spent decades doing the expensive, unglamorous work that online marketplaces usually push onto sellers. Its lesson is not simply to cut out the middleman - it is to replace the useful parts of the middleman without swallowing the maker's margin.
Microwd Inversiones
Microwd is a Madrid-based social fintech that lets ordinary people invest from as little as 50 euros into microloans for women entrepreneurs across Latin America. It pairs field agents on the ground in Nicaragua, Mexico, Peru and Costa Rica with an online platform where investors fund roughly $1,000, one-year loans at interest rates it says run well below the local microfinance market. The pitch is unusual for the space: not charity, but a for-profit business that claims both financial returns for investors and measurable social impact for borrowers.