MicroPlace is a social business owned by eBay. Our mission is to help alleviate global poverty by inspiring individuals to make investments in the world’s poor. We want to unleash the capital in people’s investment portfolios and harness it to make a difference in the fight against poverty.  It focuses on microfinance loans sent via the internet, utilizing PayPal, allowing users to choose specific lending clients and businesses and loan them money over a designated period of time.

Imagine the possibilities if PayPal’s 70 million users were to each commit $500 to a MicroPlace investment – making $35 billion of financial services funding available to the world’s working poor. By engaging with you and its community of partners, merchants, and consumers, PayPal believes it’s possible to realize that kind of radical, positive contribution.

The PayPal business model is about enabling you, merchants, consumers, and developers to access and use financial services in creative and innovative ways. Similarly, microfinance is about creating ways for the world’s poor to access the same financial tools that we enjoy in order to help them cope with the unpredictability of their incomes and life circumstances.

Through MicroPlace, PayPal provides its customers with a way to finance the success of the poor by making crucial fundamental economic resources available to them. Exclusion from the international formal banking infrastructure is no longer the rule – indeed, MicroPlace and PayPal give the poor another ray of hope.

MicroPlace is a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay Inc. and an affiliate of PayPal, Inc