Kiva today has reached the milestone of 50 million US$, doubling the loan volume in the last 8 months. I have been lending on Kiva for nearly 2 years now and so far all of my borrowers have repaid me (unlike my MyC4 borrowers). Kiva is doing a very good job in keeping defaults low.
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Continue reading → 50 million US$ Kiva loans

Social lending site Kiva.org celebrates it’s third anniversary. In this time Kiva loans with a volume of approximately 45 million US$ have been financed by over 340,000 Kiva users worldwide.  The repayment rate is quoted as 98.6% (see more stats).
Currently Kiva hopes to win a 1.5 million US$ grant in the American Express members project [...]

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Continue reading → Kiva celebrates 3rd birthday

When I decided to withdraw some money from my Kiva account, I was informed:
This email confirms your withdrawal request of $25.00. You can expect the funds to be deposited into your paypal account within 1-3 weeks.
This astonished me. The withdrawal is conducted via paypal (as is the upload). The upload was almost instantly. Therefore [...]

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Continue reading → It takes weeks to withdraw money from my Kiva account

Lately I’ve been at a loss for words on the peer lending industry and it’s overall behavior/attitude towards it’s clients. From Prosper.com’s complete ignorance to Lending Club’s quiet period (which still make little sense to me) I feel so anxious, frustrated and annoyed with all of the things I see and hope for not connecting [...]

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Continue reading → Adios mi Amigos!

As some of you may know, I am a Kiva.org lender and have been since March 2007. Recently I noticed a huge increase in the number of loans that need funding, actually, I darn call it a flood of loans. Some 622 as of this post still need help. This is a major switch from [...]

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Continue reading → Kiva Thoughts

With the latest news about Prosper.com being sued by lenders I thought I would play the contrarian and bid on some loans today. There are some pretty good loans in the offing at the moment if you take the time to look, so I transferred (thanks to the instant transfer via the Facebook.com app) $407.73 [...]

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Continue reading → Rolling The Dice

This morning my wife expressed her desire to see the Prosper.com money that will be flowing outbound go towards Kiva.org instead of our HSBC savings account. She has enjoyed helping others in countries of need and figures the P2P aspect with Kiva.org is worth any lost interest we would otherwise gain in HSBC or using [...]

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Continue reading → My wife’s two cents…

I’ve been contemplating this for a while now, but the one serious flaw with Kiva.org that keep us for going full steam ahead is the lack of any sort of return on the investment (other than human capital). So as of today, we are stopping Kiva.org lending and switching instead to MicroPlace.com for our global [...]

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Continue reading → In The Interest of Interest

Thy Phlang Village Bank Group
Popeal Khaer Village, Cambodia
Mrs. Thy Phlang is the Village Bank President in Popeal Khaer Village, Kandal Province. There are 33 members in her group.
She is 34-years-old and has two children, both of whom are too young to work or study. Mrs. Thy Phlang’s second child has malaria and takes frequent trips [...]

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Continue reading → Kiva Loans (5/18/2008)

A topic on Kivafriends that doesn’t want to die (which shows its importance), is whether to offer interest rates to lenders or not. And it’s a topic that I can’t stop pondering about– I’ve often said that I support it, but that I prefer the “feel-good…

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Continue reading → Interest for Kiva Lenders — why maybe yes, and why maybe not

Ciriaca Colque is her name. She runs a milk transport business that brings milk from the farms in the Altiplano of La Paz to the local Pil Andina diary factory, in El Alto, Bolivia. El Alto literally means “The Height”, and high it is: 4150 meters (13,…

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Continue reading → Finally… Bolivia!

Disclaimer / Challenge: please note that the blog post you’re reading is based on my personal insights and logic I think is true. As I have no economics or financial background at all, I would be thrilled to be proved wrong. Please let me know if you d…

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Continue reading → Paying interest to Kiva lenders

Following Pondering Pig’s example, I created a My Google Map (or a Google My-Map or whatever) for my investments. Here it is.Some other users Kiva Maps:Christopher from LondonFred from TexasPomerleau Family’s mapPondering Pig’s map (which we already me…

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Continue reading → All Kiva investments on one Google Map!

This post is in direct response to Richard Kent’s encouragements to keep on investing in Kiva, in a thread at the Kivaloans Yahoogroup mailing list. Richard is the Ugandan CEO/D for Children Care Ministries, a religious based charity in Uganda.My reply…

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Continue reading → Poverty: why bothering is good for us

It all started with Ben Elbinger’s cryptic message to the Kivaloans Yahoogroup last night. A new country was coming on-line. A NEW COUNTRY!Interestingly, a new country on Kiva.org is an occasion for excitement, enticement, and loan-spending debauchery….

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Continue reading → Yippee-a-yay, Haiti here we come!

For those of you that haven’t visited Kendall Mau’s blog in a while, or that haven’t visited his blog at all, please do so. He recently added a WEALTH of information about the inner workings and considerations of the MFI he runs in Honduras and Nicarag…

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Continue reading → Go see Kendall Mau’s blog!

Since it’s a new month, I just entered by bimonthly loan, my loan number 12. This one is to Dunia Herrera, why sells cloth in Choluteca, Honduras. Choluteca, in addition to having a cool name, looks on Google Maps just like the place I’d like to spend …

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Continue reading → Small loan to Dunia Herrera in Choluteca, Honduras

As I have described over and again, my believe is that in order for a micro-entrepreneur to be successful, the business (and thereby inferred–the micro-loan) needs to fulfill several objective and subjective criteria. If they don’t, then the loan is n…

Continue reading → Kiva and longer loan terms

One of the advantages of investing into a local opportunity through Kiva is, that you, consciously or subconsciously, keep better track of what is going on in those countries in which you invested. And therefore, when things are happening in Ecuador, i…

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Continue reading → Soon to be Republica Bolivariana de Ecuador?

As I must have told all of the 3 people that read this blog on an (ir)regular basis, for the last few months I have been trying to get something going between Kiva and Peruvian MFIs. My report on what I did while I was out there last month, has been lo…

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Continue reading → Opportunities for Kiva in Perú