Fifteen years ago IPC, a well-known consulting company based in Frankfurt/Germany, started to invest in the development of software that would give microfinance institutions optimal support. As a supplement to its consulting work in developing and transition countries IPC developed a software, which originally was designed to assist microfinance institutions only in their lending to micro and small enterprises, but has now come to be used by institutions in more than 20 countries not only for administering their loan portfolios, but also for a broad variety of deposit-side operations and payment transactions. Today, the software includes as well a General Ledger and a Financial Reporting Module and provides all of the IT capabilities that a financial institution, which is oriented to the MSME- sector, needs for conducting its business operations quickly and efficiently.

The role of IPC has significantly changed over the last years: instead of the typical advisory services to NGO´s, public development banks and privately owned commercial banks provided on behalf of international donor institutions, IPC is now predominantly providing management services to the banks of the “ProCredit Bank- network”, which are all controlled by the shareholders of ProCredit Holding, an equity investment company with participations in almost 20 microfinance institutions.

Given these changes in the business operations of IPC, it was decided to outsource the IT department of the company in order to increase the transparency and accountability of the IT operations with the banks of the “ProCredit Bank- network”. Consequently, in March 2004 the new company, QUIPU GmbH, was established with the goal to further improve the efficiency of work and the quality of products.

For the banks of the “ProCredit Bank-network” this means that the services offered by QUIPU are no longer free of charge, but at the same time there is high pressure on QUIPU to provide its services in such a manner that all ProCredit Banks are sufficiently satisfied with the quality of these services and pay a fair price for them.

QUIPU´s subscribed capital is EUR 900.000, of which more than 95% have been paid in by the three owners: Dr. Claus-Peter Zeitinger, Gabriele Heber and Ralf Niepel. Mr. Niepel is the managing director of the company, which has its head office in Ritterhude/Germany. QUIPU has currently more than 60 qualified professionals on its permanent staff.

QUIPU has three main working areas:

• System administration
• Processing Center
• Software development and implementation

In the area of system administration QUIPU offers continuous support to ProCredit Holding- and IPC- headquarters and support on demand (including help desk functionality) and training to all banks of the “ProCredit Bank-network” regarding

• LAN/WAN infrastructure
• Network security
• Operating systems
• Communication systems

In the Processing Center QUIPU offers so called “EFT services” to ProCredit Banks and other financial institutions. “EFT services” (= Electronic Financial Transactions) include the authorization, clearing and settlement of debit cards, credit cards, balance inquiries, withdrawals, account statements, payments, P2P transfers, card to card transfers, etc.. Additionally, QUIPU offers management support to the banks regarding ATM and POS management and framework agreements with suppliers as well as support for licensing and implementation with international card providers like MasterCard and VISA. Furthermore, QUIPU is planning to become more and more a think tank on EFT business for the banks of the “ProCredit Bank-network”.

In the area of Software development and implementation QUIPU´s main product is the “QuipuBankingSystem” which currently consists of two modules: “QuipuCustomware”, which is modelled on the operating structures of the banks in order to support efficiently its procedures for the everyday banking practice and which collects and processes data from all lines of business - and “QuipuBankware”, which stores all of an institution´s account and transaction information and posts them to its accounting system. Both applications are based on a Client/Server-architecture and on PC workstations as clients. Both use an MS SQL 2000 database and are designed to be used in a Windows environment. The general decision in favour of Microsoft technology was taken because of its user friendliness, its world-wide availability and the fact that all necessary products are well integrated. Regarding the delivery channels QUIPU is collaborating with other companies which are well known in the market. The programming language for QuipuCustomware is currently Xbase++; QuipuBankware has been developed in Visual C++.

In order to guarantee an optimal support in the maintenance of the software, QUIPU established regional offices in South America, Africa, Moscow and South-East Europe. The main role of the professionals working in these offices is to support the banks directly in bug fixing, periodic checks and of the database and the development of new reports (Help desk function). Furthermore they will participate in the maintenance of the database model and in the continuous development of new products.