Microloans can be used for more than business investments: they can help families gain better access to safe water and sanitation.Since their start, traditional microloans have been linked to microenterprises, tiny businesses that get large benefits from borrowing small bits of capital. But while the world’s poor are mostly informally self-employed, the majority are not entrepreneurial–they do not own businesses. Because the microloan industry targets businesses, a huge swath of the poor who lack basic needs like clean water are being left underbanked. A more universal and basic approach for microloans to assist the more than 3 billion people who live on less than $2.50 a day is providing small loans to break up payments for large purchases.