Kiva Reviews

The concept sounds good loan money to a worthy business get repaid choose another business to loan to enjoy seeing their success Unfortunately the businesses treat the loans as gifts and don t repay them at least none of mine were repaid Total fail Take note that all the 5-star reviews are from many years ago

It may have worked in the past but it doesn t anymore I got repaid for 1 in 3 loans I dislike Kiva putting a lot of pressure on people to lend more money I liked the idea of people being adults and taking responsibility for their own lives instead of handouts I have noticed many other people also have unsatisfactory experiences with Kiva

Kiva is horrible If you don t read the fine print you ll be ripped off They have a default choice allowing them to steal your deposit and interest after a short amount of time of inactivity - during a pandemic Stay away from another default choice company that sets the fine print to line their pockets

Introducing an Auto-Lending-Feature as opt-out is a fraudulent business practice Also use an US based but very poorly rated field partners for auto-lending loans feels like a scam Beware of this company It appears to me that the main goal of kiva is to absorb the account balances into the overhead

HORRIBLE way to lend money Ive lent over 10 000 with Kiva which puts me in the top 1 of lenders on their platform The first 9 month from the loan origination date was a breeze was able to track my loans see estimated repayment dates and keep taps on delinquencies The problems start when you begin to redeem withdrawal funds from the platform like clockwork they freeze your account delay withdrawals and take 20 business days replying to EACH email

12 16 23 - ANOTHER UPDATE Emailed me again and sent the same instructions that haven t worked for the last 10 months Have stopped responding again Kiva seems to have absolutely no interest in honoring their gift cards 5 9 23 UPDATE HERE Replied to the email address that Kiva put in response to this review and - surprise surprise - nobody responded These guys are truly shameless Won t honor gift cards I received gift cards from a family member for Kiva and they didn t work Kiva refused to honor them and eventually just stopped replying to my emails Tried to cancel my account but the website is down as is often the case Highly unprofessional organization

This place sends me notifications all the time to donate but I am told I cannot be approved for kiva loaning on there platform because I don t meet there criteria or guidelines But they have failed to tell me what that is SOUNDS LIKE AN OLD BAIT AND SWITCH THE STATE DEPARTMENT NEEDS TO INVESTIGATE THESE PLATFORMS LIKE KIVA BECAUSE THEIR TAKING PEOPLES MONEY UNDER FISHY CIRCUMSTANCES

Many many years ago I lent money with Kiva thinking it was the right thing to do As their image tarnished I decided not to lend anymore Since then Kiva have constantly sent me emails saying I have money in my account and if I don t withdraw it or lend it out then it will either be repaid or donated to them There was no term on sign up or that I have agreed to since about such a donation I contacted them Kiva initially said they d send it to my bank account but then refused Insisting I must have a paypal account that I do not have and do not want and where the terms are unacceptable to me It is not for Kiva to dictate how I handle my finances and to refuse to return my money in reasonable ways So I let it time out so that the law requires they return it to me They simply reset the counter and held onto my money We re coming up to that counter hitting again So I contacted them Again they refuse to return my money in a reasonable way Again insisting on dictating how and with whom I handle my financial affairs presumably they have shares in paypal Worse from one support agent to the next they are absolutely clueless about what has been discussed The last writing to me that they were sorry I had difficulty submitting my withdrawal request Which is somewhat insulting when Kiva are for what seems like the millionth time refusing to properly return my money as they re legally required to and were legally required to do quite some time ago It s 121 so not the end of the world It s become a bit of a curiosity for me - I m curious to see how low Kiva will stoop to keep their grubby little hands on people s money It s a shame to see something good decline into something so despicably money grabbing But there you have it - kiva Find an alternative Edit for Kiva s response Kiva posted 5 different responses on this review The first one being a standard response that was completely irrelevant to my complaint Firstly let me be clear there was no suspected fraud activity from me as Kiva s response might imply and the funds had been loaned many times Kiva did however break statutory law and not return the funds The statement Kiva does not hold onto lenders funds unless there is suspected fraud activity or the funds have not been lent at least once from Kiva is therefore highly inappropriate seen as it is them breaking the law not their customers For Kiva to imply otherwise in a public post is outrageous This is the kind of company people are giving money to I would highlight also that the terms they refer to weren t in the agreements with such long term customers and I have never agreed to any change I have lent the funds many many times but I m under no obligation to lend them - not even once Kiva agreed to a bank transfer then went back on that offer A check is of absolutely no use to residents of many countries in the world where banks simply do not accept them In terms of expenses it is also significantly cheaper to do a bank transfer than issue a piece of paper So much so it is the default method used in countries throughout the world On the topic of Kiva s operating expenses - It is worrying to me personally the lengths that kiva are willing to go to including breaking their state s laws on returning funds and publically slandering their lenders in order to keep their operating expenses low I d suggest it should be concerning to everyone Kiva - your operating expenses are not more important than your obligation to return lenders money in a reasonable manner as the law requires you to This has been going on for years Sort yourselves out And yes I can log into my account to change some irrelevant options in my account - but as you know if I do so it resets the counter on your legal obligations again doesn t it So I won t be falling for that Edit after Kiva s update These deceptive updates on trustpilot from Kiva are very worrying and should be to anybody thinking about giving them money Kiva have offered to send a check that they know is not cashable in my country and many others and has refused to honor their earlier agreement to send a bank transfer as any normal organization would and is cheaper Far from waiting on my response - I am still waiting on theirs Please note so far their edits - kiva refuse to return lender s money as required by their statutory law via a reasonable method they slanderously imply that this is lender s fault for not following their terms knowing that they have and lie about the state of the support request Got to wonder how and if kiva actually manage to pay any of their bills and operating expenses they seem so concerned about Yet another edit Finally got my money back I m not going to change my star rating though as I looked it up and it s been 3 5 years

After lending with Kiva every month for 15 years I am sadly stopping I have read recent articles from trusted news sources raising serious issues about the organisation These include extremely high salaries for the executives new fees to local lenders higher interest for African vs US loans and a for-profit Kiva enterprise with Google Also the site is set up for donors to believe their money goes directly to the people they choose which is not exactly the case Money goes to the local lender in the country who loans to their current applicants I thought Kiva was a pure microlending nonprofit but my research made me question their objectives

Good for donations only I m drawn between whether I think the owners really want to help people or if they ve just created an ingenious ponzi scheme This is definitely not a route to go with for investments But the good side is which is why I gave 2 stars because you are actually helping less fortunate people that actually strive to better their lives instead of donating money to something like WWP or Salvation Army who s CEO s make millions and get raises every year I mean Kiva s revenue for 2020 is reported at 43million and their expenses were 35million so they re making out like bandits so surely their better at math than the coding is on their website Now I was skeptical so I m only out a few bucks thank god I didn t deposit a lot I started with a deposit of 29 which became 28 75 so thats ok I made a 3 75 donation and lent the remaining 25 I have received 4 repayments and 4 repayments remain the repayments I received are 1 90 1st 2 92 2nd 3 03 3rd 3 15 4th scheduled to receive 3 28 5th 3 42 6th 3 56 7th 3 71 8th and final now that equals 24 97 I lost 03 on 25 which is less than a 1 loss so thats cool I ve had bigger losses on the stock exchange but the point is their system is broken They have over 2million users so you figure 0012 cents per 25 lent If everyone 2 million people lent 25 50million dollars total thats 60k in Kiva s pocket and everyone else is down So like I said good for donating because it goes to real people I just find it funny too that they can t guarantee loans which is the risk of lending money but yet the non-profit organization has over 10 employees with salaries over 100k hmm and its reported the CEO made over 800k in 2020 Anyway I hope my review helped if you just want to honestly help people donate it on Kiva the majority of it does go to people in need Don t donate to Wounded Warrior Project or Salvation Army or Kids Wish Network etc