Kiva loans

ENGLISH / 繁體中文

＊Web address
http://www.kiva.org/

＊What is Kiva?
Kiva is an NGO(Non-Governmental Organization), also is an non-profitable organization. They cooperate with local microfinance(Field Partners) to fund loans through internet and borrow loans to the locals who need them. The money would come back to lenders when borrowers return the loans, every penny of it. Lenders could lend the money again to other people or keep it for themselves. Kiva funds themselves by the donations from members and supports from some enterprises.

Kiva is different from other charities because:
(1) Your supporting money would not disappear, and you could help many people with the same money, unless the borrower runs away and doesn’t return the loan. Lending loans means you would take this risk more or less, though there are people of Kiva and Field Partners qualifying borrowers for you. The repayment rate of Kiva is 98.98% for now.

(2) The ones whom you are supporting usually have basic living standard, that’s why they could pay your loan back. You just help them to have a better life. It’s rare to see something like schools, clinics asking for loans.

＊How does Kiva works?
Here’s an example:
(1) A farmer named Frankie wants to buy a truck to transport more potatoes. He went to a Field Partner of Kiva and talked to his friend Elephant. (Note: these Field Partners should also be NGO usually, because they usually don’t charge commissions or interests on the loan.)

(2) Elephant went to Frankie’s farm and have a look. He thought Frankie is trust-worthy, so he gave Frankie the loan. According to what Kiva said, Elephant is supposed to lend Frankie money on the spot, and apply loan money from Kiva. But I think it’s not always like that. Sometimes Frankie still needs to wait until Kiva funds all the loan from internet and gives it to him.

Elephant would give all the data of Frankie to Kiva at this stage, including why Frankie needs those money, how long Frankie would pay back the loan and how(by years, months or weeks)

(3) The volunteers of Kiva would translate Frankie’s data and examine it. If everything is OK, they would put Frankie’s profile on the web and start to fund Frankie’s loan on line. I don’t know how many financial, banking professionals there are in Kiva, but I suppose they are quite experienced since they had done this job for more than 7 years.

(4) As soon as the money arrives, Frankie could use it to buy a truck and work with it. After maybe 6 months, Frankie has enough money and pay back the loan to Elephant.

(5) Elephant transfers the money into Kiva’s account, then Kiva returns it to every lenders. The case is closed.

＊Why do I recommend?
I was introduced Kiva by a Couchsurfer Den who is working in Bangkok now. He had been using Kiva for a while. Den is a nice and interesting guy, so I thought Kiva is trust-worthy.

All your money would go straightly to the borrowers without any commission charge nor interests, maybe just lose some due to the exchange rate, that’s why I like Kiva. Whom they/you are helping might not be the poorest people, but definitely be the ones who really need your help. You could find many people from the Third World on Kiva, and you could know what their dreams are. Some risks that you need to take is losing money if you lend to someone who just runs away and never returns. If you trust those people of Kiva, you might put some small money here and see how it goes. As something that you just need to move your fingers to do, this is almost a perfect way to join charity activities.

＊Free $25 trial
Some Kiva members offer some money to encourage people joining this community. If a registered member invites someone to join Kiva, both of them get $25 on Kiva. You could use it to borrow somebody, then experience how it goes when you’re borrowing, waiting, getting back money and borrowing it again to someone else. This $25 could not be withdrawn. If you like it, then you put your own money on Kiva and run it.

＊How does money flow?
You need to have a PayPal account to use Kiva. All the money flowing processes go through PayPal. PayPal uses credit cards or bank accounts to deduct and return money. You might choose the best way to you. If you just want to use $25 free trial, you don’t need a PayPal account.

PayPal: https://www.paypal-apac.com/tw/individual.aspx

When you’re lending, Kiva deducts money from your PayPal account, and returns it back to your account when borrowers return money back. If someday you don’t want to use Kiva anymore, you just stop borrowing money, and transfer money to your own bank account when all the money comes back. Of course you might donate some to Kiva to help them keeping on going.

Be awared: Not every bank, every types of account could access PayPal. Make sure your bank/account could connect with PayPal, then start playing Kiva.

＊Use Kiva to fund a loan
It seems that you cannot borrow money directly from Kiva, as they cooperate with local microfinance(Field Partners). If you need to get some money through this way, contact Kiva and ask which Field Partner is the closest to you, then contact them.

＊If you want to join Kiva
Feel free to leave your E-mail address to me, either on the commend fields below if you don’t mind to show it to the public, or use THIS to contact me privately. I will invite you to join Kiva, then you could start to use your $25 trial. Once you get the invitation mail:
(1) Press the link in that mail and link to Kiva.
(2) There should be a yellow “Lend” button somewhere on the page. Press it to start.
(3) Search someone that you want to help to by typing country name or business name(e.g. food) in the search field. The searching page is written by Java scripts, you might download the newest JAVA if it cannot be shown correctly on your browser.
(4) Press “Lend” button on the profile of whom you want to lend to, then it goes to register page. Fill out all the necessary fields and save, then you become a Kiva member. Your $25 trial goes to him, and you could invite someone to join as well.

＊Remarks
(1) There are some other web sites doing something like this. I recommend Kiva because of Den. You might also recommend some here if you had used some nice sites.
(2) If you don’t like Kiva or you know something bad about it, feel free to commend here as references.