Kiva

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Omidyar Network’s heritage and approach make it a natural partner for Kiva; their funding helps position us to further our work and amplify our social impact.


— Premal Shah, Kiva President

Kiva connects a global community of online lenders and entrepreneurs to bring microfinance to both established and underserved markets around the world.

Why We Invested

Kiva created the world’s first online microlending platform, connecting individual lenders to entrepreneurs with limited access to financial services. Kiva partners with microfinance institutions, who post potential borrowers to the Kiva website. Lenders can then search and select which entrepreneurs to fund. Since October 2005, the Kiva community has lent more than $150 million to nearly 400,000 entrepreneurs globally. 

More than 2 billion people lack access to formal or semi-formal financial services, inhibiting their ability to stabilize income, build up assets, and plan for the future. With its technology-driven approach, Kiva has been a leader in bringing awareness of microfinance to the mass market and enabling significant capital flow to those who need it.  With Omidyar Network’s support, Kiva will further develop its technology platform, expand its network of field partners, and invest in its due diligence and monitoring capabilities across its growing portfolio.

Impact
  • Total value of all loans made through Kiva: over $150 million
  • Number of Kiva Users: over 740,000
  • Number of Kiva Users who have funded a loan: over 470,000
  • Number of countries represented by Kiva Lenders: over 200
  • Number of entrepreneurs that have received a loan through Kiva: over 390,000
  • Number of loans that have been funded through Kiva: approximately 210,000
  • Current repayment rate (all partners): 98.79%
  • Number of countries Kiva Field Partners are located in: 53
  • A loan was made on Kiva.org every 31 seconds on average in 2008.
  • Kiva Loan descriptions are translated by over 337 volunteers located across the globe, keeping new loans feeding to the website 24 hours a day.

 *All statistics are as of August 2010