What are decentralised financial services?
The project is working with institutions which have made, or are planning to make, an attempt to share decision making with the people they serve as opposed to a centralized system where all the decisions are made by a central authority. Most decentralised financial services are user owned, some are user managed and comprise of small savings and credit co-operatives, informal Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) and Accumulating Savings and Credit Associations (ASCA’s). Further, NGO’s supporting groups also belong to this category since they are working on making these groups self managed.

Most the DFS institutions generate their funds from members’ savings.  In some cases NGO’s lend additional funds to the groups in order to encourage the groups own savings.