by Catherine Holahan

On the online auction giant's new MicroPlace site, investors can lend as little as $50 to would-be small business owners around the globe.

Tracey Pettengill Turner doesn't want to give handouts to poor people. But she does want to make investments in them. So on Oct. 24, Turner is launching MicroPlace.com, a Web site that lets small investors provide low-interest "micro" loans, of $50 or more, to would-be small business owners. Her hope is to create sustainable economic growth in the world's most impoverished communities-and do her part to expand the reach of the microfinance industry to more than 1 billion people worldwide, from about 100 million people currently.

Turner's outsized ambitions are backed by an equally formidable player. Internet commerce giant eBay acquired the company in June, 2006, for a small, undisclosed, sum when it was little more than Turner and her business plan. MicroPlace benefits from the lessons eBay has learned working with the millions of small business owners and consumers who buy and sell on its family of sites. Paypal, eBay's online payment service, will process the loans free of charge. "There are a billion people in the world who are self-employed, hard-working, and poor, and we are hoping to scale the industry to at least a billion," Turner says.

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[See second source to visit the microplace website]