Matt Flannery has written a great article recapitulating the story of Kiva. “Kiva at four” centers on the developments in the past two years. Flannery shares his vision what Kiva might develop to.
I won’t even try to extract the highlights as the whole article is a fascinating read.
I just guaranteed $25 of a loan to Sakho Devi and group, Ritudih, India via Unitedprosperity.org. United Prosperity has launched on May 28th. See my earlier United Prosperity review including an interview with CEO Bhalchander Vishwanath for more information on the concept.
Signing up and selecting the loan went smoothly. For the requested loan of 1,052 US$ a guarantee of 579 US$ needs to be raised.
Sakho Devi has a grocery shop of her own, with which she earns her living. She has applied for a microloan to expand her small grocery shop, so that she can meet the demand from customers.
The listing also states some data about the partner MFI – Ajiwika Society – it’s interest rate, delinquency rate, default rate and target clients.
Tomorrow Kiva will announce that it will start to fund loans to borrowers in the United States. Kiva, which so far lets anyone support loans to small entrepreneurs in developing countries, is reacting to lender suggestions who wanted to use Kiva to help borrowers in need in the US.
In the US Kiva will partner with Accion USA and Opportunity Fund to select eligible borrowers. Initially the small business owners borrowing will be from the areas of Atlanta, Boston, Miami, New York and San Francisco. Continue reading
The Kiva API allows anyone to develop applications that use the data from Kiva loans. Below are screenshots from two Kiva loan apps.
Kiva loans by country of borrower – source Kivadata.org Continue reading
The site Prosper.com shows only a maintenance note today saying “… We expect the site to be down both Saturday (4/25/2009) and Sunday (4/26/2009).”.
Speculation: Maybe Prosper will end its quiet period and resume its full p2p lending service on Monday?
I am blogging this live while listening to the Kiva conference call. Kiva plans a loan matching program, where lenders and institutions can opt to automatically match loans made by other lenders.
Some statements/explanations from the conference call:
Kiva says the new feature allows to automate the lending process and hopes that it inspires others to lend more.
The matching program will probably be launched in summer 2009.
On terms of automation there are similarities to the autobid feature MYC4 has.
See the following presentation for more details on the plans.
On other issues, there was the message that chances are good, that the Ebony Foundation (a MFI) repays outstanding loans (approx. 40,000 US$).