MicroPlace, a site that lets you make small loans to workers in developing countries and receive a return, just recently launched. Josh Susser, one of the contractors that worked on it, wrote a great introduction to the project.

“As far as I am aware, MicroPlace is the first SEC-registered online brokerage implemented in Ruby on Rails. We had to go through an extensive security audit, and there were a lot of regulatory requirements for us to meet… But the bottom line is that we didn’t have any significant problems with either Ruby or Rails in passing those hurdles.”

Josh also mentioned that MicroPlace is owned by eBay, making this the first Rails project at an otherwise all-Java shop. Awesome, high-fives all around guys. I hope to see more posts about the development aspect of the site.