Arnaud Poissonnier was formerly Development Director for the bank Neuflize OBC, and in 2004 was involved in a project with OXUS, the microcredit branch of the French NGO ACTED.
He met his first woman micro-entrepreneur during a visit to Tajikistan. This experience confirmed his vision of microcredit, a tool that prompted the creation, with Aurélie Duthoit, an entrepreneur, of the Babyloan website, based on the model of the Californian website Kiva for solidarity-based funding.