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Kiva was founded in October 2005.

Kiva is based in San Francisco, California. 

Kiva has offices across the world, for example in Bangkok, Nairobi, & Portland.

Matt Flannery & Jessica Jackley

In 2003 Jessica Jackley and Matt Flannery became interested in microfinance after attending a lecture given by Grameen Bank's Muhammad Yunus at Stanford Business School. Both Jackley and Flannery spent some time in Africa interviewing entrepreneurs about the problems they face when trying to start a new business. Throughout their research Jackley and Flannery observed that most entrepreneurs struggle with a lack of access to start-up capital.

Kiva is founded by crowdfunding. Lenders crowdfund the loan in increments of $25 or more. At the end of the loan cycle lenders have the option to use repayments to fund new loans, donate, or withdraw the money. Lenders do not receive interest from the loans they provide on Kiva. 

According to the Kiva website, Kiva covers most of their operating costs through voluntary donations made by Kiva lenders. While Kiva does not directly charge borrowers interest for the loan most borrowers pay interest to Kiva’s Field Partners. To summarize, “Field Partners collect interest from borrowers because there are many expenses associated with providing small loans in developing markets, especially in rural areas” (kiva.org). 

In addition Kiva is also supported by grants, loans, and donations from its users, corporations, and national institutions. Some of its major partners include The MasterCard Foundation, the HP Foundation, Capital One, the Pepsico Foundation & the Metlife Foundation just to name a few.

By 2016, a total of 1,036,558 loans had been funded by Kiva. In addition Kiva had distributed $827,356,850 in loans from 1,394,336 lenders to 1,928,760 borrowers. Furthermore, the average loan size given by Kiva is $411.26, and the average Kiva user has made 10.17 loans (Wikipedia). 

Kiva administers microlending for these humanitarian purposes. 

Kiva aims to provide impoverished individuals with access to monetary funding that is not available to them via traditional financial means.

Kiva uses peer-to-peer financing. Kiva allows people to lend money via the Internet to low-income entrepreneurs and students in about 80 countries. 

Kiva's mission statement is "to expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive." 

Kiva has a “lifting one, to lift many” philosophy -- in other words, “when a Kiva loan enables someone to grow a business and create opportunity for themselves, it creates opportunities for others as well” (kiva.org). 

Kiva provides individuals with loans in more than 80 countries. Individuals who apply for a Kiva loan come from many different industries. For example the borrowers may be farmers, artisans, students, & small business owners. As of 2017, 81% of Kiva's loans have been made to women. In the past Kiva, like its competitors, have focused on supporting women because research has shown that women can gain the most from microcredit. Unfortunately, in many developing countries, “women often suffer the most from poverty because scarce resources are often allocated to a family's males, rather than its females” (Wikipedia). 

More recently Kiva has been developing programs to support individuals obtaining a higher education, to help borrowers move to cleaner and safer forms of energy (Green loans), and to provide support to refugees.

Kiva’s investment in big data analytics and research has helped reshape the policies surrounding how to measure and determine credit worthiness. For example, using a cloud-based data warehouse from Snowflake Computing, Kiva found that loans to refugees and IDPs have a repayment rate on Kiva of 96.6%, while loans to non-refugee populations have a repayment rate of 96.8%. Furthermore Kiva’s goal now has become to help establish a credit history for refugees via blockchain technology. Needless to say, providing, “identity credentials and credit histories for people who, through no fault of their own, are unable to access more conventional financial lending systems” would be a game changer for the microlending industry. 

In addition Kiva is currently working on a facial recognition system that will make it possible to screen and approve loan applications faster (Microloans: 9 Platforms Changing the Game in 2018).

Kiva operates in the alternative financial lending domain mainly by providing microloans. According to Investopedia, "microloans are small loans that are issued by individuals rather than banks or credit unions." In many cases, like it is for Kiva, microloans are given to impoverished people in Third World countries who otherwise lack access to traditional financing options.

In recent years the microlending domain has seen a push to innovate it practices with fintech tools. For example there has been a push to provide direct payments to borrowers via PayPal and other direct payment platforms. Using direct payments to distribute funds to borrowers would dramatically increase the efficiency and reduce administrative costs for companies like Kiva. 

There has also been a push to use information gathered via data analytic platforms and biometric measures to help establish the credit worthiness of individuals. For example in Guatemala there has been a movement to use mobile data to help access the credit risk of individuals with limited access to traditional credit opportunities. 

Finally there has been a push to use the internet to facilitate and encourage the participation of both lenders and borrowers in platforms like Kiva. Kiva for example uses its website to encourage borrowers to lend and donate their funds by making the process simpler and by allowing them to choose the stories and efforts that interest them the most. 

Every 2 minutes a  Kiva loan is approved. 

By 2016, a total of 1,036,558 loans had been funded by Kiva. In addition Kiva had distributed $827,356,850 in loans from 1,394,336 lenders to 1,928,760 borrowers. Furthermore, the average loan size given by Kiva is $411.26, and the average Kiva user has made 10.17 loans (Wikipedia). 

Kiva has developed several projects that provide borrowers with alternative ways to establish their credit worthiness. For example in 2011 Kiva brought to the market Kiva Zip, which aims to provide, “small businesses with 0% interest loans by utilizing an entrepreneur’s personal network as a measure of creditworthiness and asking them to vouch for the entrepreneur” (Kiva: A crowdlending twist on traditional microfinance). 

Kiva has been very successful at not only providing individuals in need with the resources necessary to carry out their business plans but has also been very successful at creating a platform for individuals who want to make a difference in the world. The structure of the Kiva website allows individuals to help others without experiencing donor fatigue by structuring their contributions as loans rather than donations. And by framing their contributions as an opportunity to help someone succeed via their own hard work. 

An interesting metric in which we may compare Kiva and Grameen Bank is the repayment rate: (as of 2017) Grameen Bank's repayment rate was of 99.6% and (as of 2019) Kiva's repayment rate was between 96% and 97%.

In conclusion thanks to Kiva’s efforts and that of their contributors thousands of students have been able to afford their tuition, thousands of women have been able to start new businesses, and thousands of farmers have been able to invest in their land and crops. 

Moving forward it would benefit Kiva to continue to use (and to expand their use of) direct loans and biometric measures. 

Direct loans do not involve Field Partners, and instead send loan funds straight to a borrower's digital account. The importance of using Direct Loans results from the fact that Direct Loans cost much less to administer and as result borrowers could benefit by paying less interest.Unfortunately Direct Loans on Kiva are currently only available to businesses in the US and social enterprises internationally. 

Interest rates have been a major point of controversy within the microlending domain because many argue that high interest rates negatively impact borrowers' ability to succeed and to not default on their loans. However without Field Partners it would be very difficult to reach many borrowers in rural and undeveloped areas. That said, expanding their Direct Loans network and combining it with biometric measures (which help limit fraud and facilitate the loan application process) would greatly improve Kivas ability to reach the borrowers in more rural areas.