Abstract: Most people at the BOP (base of the economic pyramid, the largest but the poorest community in the world comprising 69% of world population) do not have access to e-commerce services. The way e-commerce is designed and practiced today does not enable their participation. The reasons are: their purchasing power is low, they do not have any means to make online payments, and there is no infrastructure to deliver the purchased items to their doors. To enable the participation of the people at BOP, we propose an e-commerce framework by engaging MFI resources and our recently developed ePassbook system. This paper shows how the BOP community can enjoy the benefits of the e-commerce service by using the proposed model. The advantages of making e-commerce available to the BOP are discussed, in addition to the challenges involved in implementing the model.

Ashir Ahmed, Kazi Mozaher Hossein, Md. Asifur Rahman, Takuzo Osugi, Akira Fukuda and Hiroto Yasuura, “Expansion of e-Commerce Coverage to Unreached Community by using Micro-Finance Infrastructure” International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications(IJACSA), 6(9), 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2015.060904

@article{Ahmed2015,
title = {Expansion of e-Commerce Coverage to Unreached Community by using Micro-Finance Infrastructure},
journal = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
doi = {10.14569/IJACSA.2015.060904},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2015.060904},
year = {2015},
publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
volume = {6},
number = {9},
author = {Ashir Ahmed and Kazi Mozaher Hossein and Md. Asifur Rahman and Takuzo Osugi and Akira Fukuda and Hiroto Yasuura}
}