Microcredit Meets Generation Y

A great story of a tech start-up designed to foster microcredit exchanges between rich first-worlders and poorer third-worlders. Good luck to the company, called Kiva. Some clips:

In their office in San Francisco's Mission District, Matt and Jessica Flannery and Premal Shah work with the fervor and techno savvy of an Internet startup aiming for an IPO. But they aren't chasing the cash for themselves.

They're doing it for Esther Egbulu in Nigeria, a mother of six who wants an $800 loan to stock her shop with frozen chickens and turkey, or 31-year-old Choeun Sonin, who's requesting $1,000 to purchase a motorcycle taxi — just two of 15,000 entrepreneurs from 36 countries that their company, Kiva, has already helped. Kiva, which means "unity" in Swahili, is a lending organization with a twist: Anyone with a bit of money and an Internet connection can step forward as a microlender to assist struggling third-world entrepreneurs get out of poverty.

After logging in, you can scroll through profiles of entrepreneurs, descriptions of their businesses, and the loan amounts they're requesting. Once you've decided who you want to lend to, you choose how much to lend, starting at as little as $25. (Individual lenders can fund an entire loan, but most of Kiva's loans are funded by multiple lenders.)

Funds are distributed to entrepreneurs through local non-profit microfinance partners in specific countries.

Eighty percent of the lenders come from the U.S., 10% from Canada, and the remainder from the rest of the world.

Kiva says entrepreneurs pay back their loans an incredible 99% of the time — a default rate unheard of at traditional financial institutions. (The Kiva team expects the rate to increase to 5% as more borrowers complete the loan cycle.) And according to Premal, most lenders reinvest their money in other entrepreneurs after a loan is paid back. Kiva's operational costs are covered by donations from lenders. The company does not take a commission from the loans facilitated on the site.