The Bill and Melinda Gates Foun­da­tion has issued a new grant that will help develop sav­ings for the world’s poor. The grant is 35 mil­lion dol­lars, and will go to help develop sav­ing sys­tems in the third world.

Those who are in poverty in the under-developed world have never had safe places to save their money. While micro­cre­dit has done a good job in extend­ing credit to the poor­est, sav­ings ser­vices has been lagging.

From ABC News, this Asso­ci­ated Press story talks to an orga­ni­za­tion who will receive some of the grant to spur new ideas for extend­ing sav­ings accounts to the world’s poor.

The Gates Foun­da­tion is pro­vid­ing an infu­sion of cash to facil­i­tate the shar­ing of ideas among the inno­va­tors and to make sure the new sys­tems offer a wide range of finan­cial services.

Alfred Han­nig, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Alliance for Finan­cial Inclu­sion, said bank­ing inno­va­tion is hap­pen­ing in devel­op­ing coun­tries with­out the foundation’s help, but the money will help speed implementation.

The alliance has a goal of reach­ing 50 mil­lion of the world’s “unbanked” by 2012.

In a phone call from Nairobi, Kenya, where the alliance was host­ing a meet­ing for rep­re­sen­ta­tives of 42 coun­tries, Han­nig said that plans are being made for a del­e­ga­tion from Kenya to go to Brazil to learn about that country’s efforts to bring bank­ing ser­vices to small vil­lages along the Ama­zon River.

“Peo­ple were wait­ing for this,” said Han­nig, who works for the Ger­man Tech­ni­cal Cor­po­ra­tion and is based in Thai­land. “This was very timely. They have been wait­ing for such a mech­a­nism for such a long time.”

Han­nig said 60 per­cent of the money from the Gates Foun­da­tion will be redis­trib­uted in smaller grants to groups like the del­e­ga­tion from Kenya to Brazil, and the Bank of Thai­land, which wants to mea­sure bank­ing access around the world through a survey.

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