Cross-relationships between microfinance and the banking sector: continuities and discontinuities in credit provision[Relations croisées entre la microfinance et le secteur bancaire : continuités et discontinuités dans l’octroi de crédit]

Microfinance became popular thanks to the success of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and the Nobel Peace Prize. Today, this type of finance for the poor is considered a social innovation because of its values, which are in opposition to the dominant financial logic, but also because of its financing methodology, which aims to integrate people who do not have access to credit. In fact, over several decades of practice, microfinance has spread to other economic actors in the financial system (banking institutions, finance companies, fund managers, etc.). Thus, despite the contradictory credit granting logics of its two market actors, microfinance has been able to influence, through its practices, the way traditional finance operates. The mobilization of a recent literature review and a case study allows us to consider that the convergence of their interactions, in a formal political and regulatory context, explains the mission drifts of microfinance described in the literature. In this paper, we attempt to demonstrate the extent to which international donors and academics have fostered the process of microfinance-specific profit-sharing by showing that banks have adopted and adapted many of the practices of microfinance. We shed light on this point by using the case of microfinance in Côte d'Ivoire. This contribution also draws on the sociology of innovation, in particular the model of profit-sharing (Akrich, Callon, Latour, 1988) to describe the process of social innovation in which microfinance takes place. This theoretical model demonstrates that the diffusion of innovation is made possible by the success of its intrinsic qualities. The paper also describes, through the work of Bensebaa and Béji-Bécheur (2007), the process of institutionalization of norms coming from the solidarity economy sector to the conventional capitalist economy. Certain limits linked to the institutionalization process of this social innovation are presented in order to allow an understanding of the criticisms and limits of microfinance.