eBay launches microlending website

0 Comments | AFP, December, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) — Online auction giant eBay has launched a microlending website that lets people invest in entrepreneurs in poor communities around the world and get a return on their money.

Unlike micro-finance organizations that make interest-free loans to people in developing countries, Microplace.com offers investors profits for funding folks trying to build better lives, said founder Tracey Turner.

"You are actually investing in the world's working poor," Turner told AFP. "And for the first time you get a return on investment. You can take the profit and invest in more people in a virtuous cycle."

Turner's vision of MicroPlace began taking shape in 2005, after she lived for a time with a Kenyan family comprised of a single mother caring for three...