my understanding (and that of our open source editors at http://grameen.tv) is microcredit is the name for the exact franchise that yunus open sources ; this contains many features that other "microfinance models" may not have.

Notoriously Martin Rizzi in other place claims in many of his posts about Mexico that many loan sharks now call themselves Mfinanciers. More Mexican MF controversy is debated here

Microcredit Truth insists on the following:

*peer to peer training on entreptreneurship among all borrowers (5 women circles)

*the whole community's face is connected with sustaining the entrepreneurs (in this context credit is a human right)

*each bank for the poor is graded until it is self-sustaining and all its surplus is reinvested back in the community

yunus keeps an eye out on how to upgrade his borrowers work - so for example whilst the main business of the loans (1970s) began with buy a cow - very much the most prized today among hard working village entrepreneurs is being the village's mobile telephone kiosk (a modern day equivalent to being the telegram operator of 100 years ago)

replicating the quality certification of microcredit is no small job ; http://www.results.org has helped yunus immensely by staging the most impactful global summit http://microcreditsummit.org where 2000 people join in annually - there are about 15 roles you can bring to this summit only one of which is being nanker but you must bring one and share experiences; this conference set the pre-millennial goal of lifing 100 million families out of poverty within 7 years

it was only about 2003 that jeff skoll and bill drayton and susan davis invited Yunus to join with them in branding the global social entrepreneur - as far as I can see Yunus is excepitional in his worldwide branding talents (vested interest I am the author of key books in the genre of the media crisis of world calss branding http://worldclassbrands.tv)

if you want to see how some billanthropists have been tempted to redesign microfinance the gos in this new yorker article is not for the conflict-innocent http://www.newyorker.com/archive /2006/10/30/061030fa_fact1

my family of economists and journalists investigators of entrepreneurial truth is 24 years into searching for what socila projects scale http://normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html; we intend to convene 1000 person debrief http://entrepreneurialrevolution .blogspot.com in 008

It is worth noting that in Bangladesh Yunus is part of a magic duo. Fazle Abed (which our open source journals cover at http://brac.tv ) franchises what only public service models can do (eg infant health and primary schools for teh very poorest). Together MYFA blend entrepreneurial and community government models to empower sustainable futures around what were the world's poorest communities.