This thesis attempts to determine the type of development being promoted by the practice of micro-credit. It explores the links between the approach to micro-credit, the practice of micro-credit and the understanding of development informing both. It establishes that a market approach is informed by an economic-centered, individualist, reformist understanding of development while the empowerment approach is informed by a power-focused, collectivist, transformative understanding of development. Although it is the market approach which is widely promoted within the development industry, it is the empowerment approach which has the greatest potential to contribute to genuine development.