Kiva in the News

It's been a big couple of weeks for Kiva. Recently, Kiva appeared in the Wall Street Journal and on an interview for the BBC (link via Kiva founder Matt Flannery's blog). This week I've so far seen the following links:

• Kiva: Become a Micro Venture Capitalist (Star Article, UK)
• Be an global financier...on a shoestring (CNN)

The CNN article is really interesting. It's the first mainstream news article I've seen to really delve into the full potential that Kiva offers:

If you've got 25 bucks, a PC and a PayPal account, you've now got the wherewithal to be an international financier.

Thanks to www.Kiva.org, a California-based Web site that connects lenders and borrowers from around the world, anyone can scan business proposals, photos and background information on potential borrowers and decide if the gambit's got legs.

The concept of letting individual, small-time, lenders pick and choose which projects to fund is new in microfinance -- the field of providing very small loans to start-up businesses, usually in the developing world. In the past the industry has been dominated by a handful of large non-profits that operate on grant money or raise cash in capital markets and then distribute as they see fit.

Although Kiva has been operating for just over two months and has served just 50 borrowers so far, all in eastern Africa, co-founder Matthew Flannery said there has been a large amount of interest in the site.

"I sit in front of a tidal wave of money," said Flannery, saying that the number of lenders far exceeds the number of people they can find to borrow the cash. "Businesses are funded in the same day that they're posted."

The article also mentions that eBay is working on a similar idea. Apparently, "although a spokeswoman for PayPal said the company wouldn't comment on what she said 'would at this point be considered rumors,' three people in the microfinance industry confirmed that eBay is developing such a site."

If the eBay site ever gets off the ground, it would be huge. Hopefully we're looking at the beginning of a whole new system of decentralized international aid and foreign development. Exciting stuff, to say the least.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 26, 2006 at 11:31 AM in Kiva/VEF | Permalink