Some of the major misconceptions about microfinance — small loans of under 0 that enable Third World residents to become entrepreneurs — can be summed up by what happened roughly a decade ago, when the pioneering Grameen Bank decided to help female villagers in Bangladesh enter the mobile phone business.

Alex Counts — CEO of the related Grameen Foundation and keynote speaker at the recent Wharton Social Impact Conference 2007 — said the idea met with the same concerns that have dogged the steady growth of microfinance ever since the concept emerged in the 1970s. “I remember hearing that … this was going to be a disaster,” noted Counts, an associate of Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and co-winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.…