The microfinance industry is increasingly focused on deposit mobilization. On the demand side, there is a growing sense that poor people should have a broader range of financial instruments available to them rather than only credit. On the supply side, institutions are increasingly keen to build a more stable, low-cost funding base from local deposits, especially in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. This renewed interest in deposit mobilization by microfinance institutions (MFIs) is also fueled by the high-profile successes of certain deposit mobilizing institutions, including Bank Rakyat Indonesia (21 million savers), Grameen Bank and ASA in Bangladesh (together, 14 million savers), Equity Bank in Kenya (3.9 million savers) and Banco Azteca in Mexico (4.5 million savers).Yet despite these notorious successes, the bulk of MFIs remain relatively small scale in terms of deposit mobilization. This prompts us to look into the growth strategies pursued by MFIs, large and small. Do the larger deposit-taking MFIs exhibit a more intensive utilization of their distribution network in terms of savers per branch (giving rise to what we term intensive growth), or do they simply have many more branches (which we term extensive or distribution-driven growth)? In this respect, we compare the behavior of MFIs against commercial banks, to see whether their growth dynamics are different. We also compare the relationship between intensity of use of branches and the total number of customers served by the institution between the savings and lending sides.