Village banking savings groups are small savings and lending organized groups with the aim growing savings and helping members of the group to borrow from the pulled savings at a small interest on a short-term basis. The term “Village” implies membership is usually among people who a familiar with each other and share certain commonalities through family, friends and community. These groups are self-managed and the rules do not allow any one saving or borrowing from the group who is not part of the group. Only persons of 18 years and above can belong to a group. These types of groups have been approved to operate by the Central bank of Zambia as they contribute in uplifting the livelihood of the communities.
Accumulated savings and interest earned on short term lending extended to members are the main source of benefits which are shared out at the end of the cycle varying between 3Month, 6Month, 9 Month and 12 Months.
In view of aforementioned Pamodzi Village Banking mobile application was developed with the rural/urban community as a main target area where many groups currently benefit from this Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) movement. This app seeks to help members of the Village banking groups with tracking the savings and Monitoring the lending as well as help with simple calculation of simple interest unlike using spread sheet which certain members of the group may not be familiar with.
The Pamodzi Village Banking App solves these problems. With an intuitive, easy-to-use interface.
The app has the following features:
- Access to track individual savings in a group
- Easily Simulate investments opportunities
- Calculate both simple and compound interest
- Access summarized group performance for transparence
- Automatically synchronize, backup and protect your data in the cloud
- Capture Savings and Approval Records
- Making Short -Term Loan requests and approval records
- Enter repayment records once the borrowing is repaid
- Group and member summaries
As a software company we identified the gaps in record management as well as Arithmetic calculations which comes with Interest calculation in most savings group we calling Village Banking groups
Currently most Savings group use excel spread sheets to capture data and make calculations for interest on savings or lending.
The app does not process any payments and we do not issue any loans through the app.all the app does is to facilitate a platform where Village banking groups can have their group records stored as well as help groups to perform book entries for their savings and lending transactions.
In View of the aforementioned we are not mandated by the central Bank to have any license because we don’t handle the payments but simply records management.