bankmecu will maintain Fitzroy and Carlton Community Credit Co-operative's focus on providing finance to low-income earners and the financially excluded when the two organisations merge next week.bankmecu announced earlier this week that the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority had endorsed the merger. FCCC's operations will be absorbed into bankmecu on June 15.FCCC, which has only about A$10 million in assets, has struggled in recent times. In 2011/12, it incurred significant impairments and reported a loss. The co-operative's auditor said there was material uncertainty about its ability to continue as a going concern.bankmecu's general manager for development, Rowan Dowland, said FCCC had not been forced to find a merger partner, however. Dowland said: "The FCCC board could see that if they were going to take their business forward they needed resources. Microfinance needs scale, resources and expertise."We have the capacity and we share their commitment to financial inclusion."Last month, bankmecu started working with Good Shepherd Microfinance and Uniting Care Kildonan to develop a pilot project to provide credit to people who are not eligible for mainstream banking and insurance products. The pilot will run in the Gippsland region of Victoria.It is in negotiations with a community development financial institution and expects to announce a partnership in the next month or two. That partnership will give bankmecu the funding to continue the social inclusion work that FCCC was doing in Melbourne.Dowland said bankmecu was not put off by the losses FCCC had sustained lending to Centrelink clients and low-income earners. "It is a small part of our business," he said."In each of the communities where we operate there is a payday lending industry. One of the things we can do is to provide an alternative to payday loans."