New Unused Credit Policy

[Guest]

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[Jan & John]

Thanks, Robert.... amazing the places we never revisit

I must have filled that in at some time, probably when we went for that record 'most KF on a loan for Lily'...

I just checked and my address and postal code are listed as 'not necessary'

and my city is, of course, http://kivafriends.org so the link shows on the lender page.

Kiva won't be sending me any cash, I'd better stay active 

-jan-

[AccountAbility]

The funny thing is that the mailing address appears to be independent of the city and state fields in the lender page. 

I just fixed my mailing address to remove the link to KivaFriends (which got pasted there from the lender page at some point in time--certainly not when I first registered since Kiva Friends didn't exist then).  Then I went back to my lender page and my KivaFriends.org is still there.

Dan

[Jan & John]

The funny thing is that the mailing address appears to be independent of the city and state fields in the lender page. 

I just fixed my mailing address to remove the link to KivaFriends (which got pasted there from the lender page at some point in time--certainly not when I first registered since Kiva Friends didn't exist then).  Then I went back to my lender page and my KivaFriends.org is still there.

Dan

ah, thanks Dan...
so the lender page is where our avatar info comes from...
(such a long memory I have, all of 2 minutes somedays)

so then...
the page with my account -> mailing address...
has no instructions or explanations saying why this info is needed or who has access to it...
how then would anyone *know* this information would be held confidential...

I obviously didn't think it would be,
but also must have been required to fill in each box...
or why else would I have written the 'not necessary' ? 

-jan-

[AccountAbility]

So bringing this back full circle to the topic at hand, if Kiva finds that there is no active PayPal account for a lender whose Kiva account has gone inactive, will they mail them a check to the last know address if they had elected return of their funds?

Dan

[Skimmis]

I am not familiar with the laws of california but:
As far as it it possible legal, Kiva should in my opinion take legal steps to make sure that as much as possible of unused credits goes to kiva,
and as litle as possible to California ( or other states.) I would guess that most lenders would like unused money to go to kiva, rather than California.

Some possible ideas:
Change TOU so all unused funds goes to kiva. The lender can ofcourse if he wants too, withdraw the money within the time limit.
I would think that the money is not without an owner, it is ordinary debt between the lender and Kiva,
and it should be possible to make this changes in the TOU.

These changes could be made for all lenders, or at least lenders logging into kiva after the change of TOU.

[Skimmis]

Here's an excerpt from PayPal's User Agreement (https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/UserAgreement/ua/USUA-outside#balances-policy):

And, Sherri, many lenders here have several 1,000s of $$ in their Kiva portfolio (which I should think is in Kiva's interest so they should really consider the interests of these lenders, too). Should one of them - which is unlikely, I agree (and hope), but not impossible - become incapicated for more than a year after their last active loan has been paid back and no-one will snoop around their financial documents or open their safe-deposit box, the money would be "lost" for them and their families.

Best wishes,
Wolfgang.

Kiva could set the time limit to 2 or 3 years.
Or after set up a montly donation/fee of 25$

[Skimmis]

There are two (sort of) "leftovers" of the idea, as far as I am aware:

* As far as I know, Kiva plans to introduce a new "Matching Feature" later this year. With it, lenders can choose (again, it's a mere option - among many others) to allow Kiva to access their inactive accounts after a certain time and use the funds for matching loans.

Apart from that, I, too, am under the impression that Kiva's plans have - for now - fortunately been shot down. This of course leaves the question whether Kiva is currently escheating the funds from inactive accounts according to Californian regulations.

Best wishes,
Wolfgang.

And now its in place.

[Skimmis]

This I know. What I was trying to say, was that with longterm loans, one can go for long periods of time, without having to check in every week. So one can easily be forget to log in for a year or three.

I cannot see how Kiva have any rights to my cash? It should be the easiest thing in the world to return funds to the bankaccount they originated from, after a certain while. I understand that Matt likes money to be working, and not just sitting there, but who is he telling me what to do with my money? If he doesn't like it to be sitting as Kiva credit, he can just return it to me!

Well , Norway all ordninary debt is canselled after 3 years, and money in bank acoounts after 10 years.
So i really dont se why Kiva shouldnt cansel debt after 3 years of lender not making changes to the account by lending, or putting money in or out of kiva   (or similar time limit in California.)

[Skimmis]

At first I was like: =(

But then I realized that if you don't log on to the site in over 12 months, you're probably not that interested anymore.

correct

[AccountAbility]

While all those suggestions might be preferred, they won't pass muster with the various laws Kiva must live by.  A year ago or so in the last iteration of this topic, Kiva did seem to be leaning toward keeping the inactive funds in loan circulation. 

Now they have opted instead to have lenders make a positive election to either donate the funds to Kiva's operations, or have Kiva return them to the lender -- presumably through a still active PayPal account, but maybe? through regular mail to the last know mailing address listed in the lender's profile.

The tricky part is what to do with inactive funds of those who have not made an election (or never had a PayPal account?).  These will probably end up being turned over under the escheat laws.

While it may still be up to interpretation, Kiva has elected to state explicitly in its Terms of Use that it will escheat funds to the lender's state of last known residence if possible.  (Maybe California will convince them otherwise.)

Dan