Kiva Partners With Visa To Expand Micro-Loans To U.S. Small Businesses

Last year, Kiva.org, one of the pioneers in micro-lending to international entrepreneurs, opened up its service to needy U.S. entrepreneurs, which caused some controversy. Since then, Kiva has facilitated more than $1 million in loans to U.S. small businesses. The new market has steadily gained its supporters, and today Kiva is launching a new partnership with Visa, that will help Kiva deliver new grants to small business owners in the U.S. Under this partnership, Visa will donate $1 million to Kiva to help with operations and the deployment of these micro-loans.

Kiva, which just celebrated its five year anniversary is a peer-to-peer lending site that began as a way to facilitate micropayment loans between citizen lenders and extremely low-income entrepreneurs in developing countries, Through Kiva?s platform, anyone can loan $25 or more to support an entrepreneur and the specific progress of the loan can be tracked from initial funding to repayment. Upon receiving repayment, lenders can withdraw their funds from Kiva or lend again to another entrepreneur, thereby continuing the lending cycle.

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