1 - 3 weeks for repaid funds withdrawal ??

[Guest]

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[cpbailey]

Paul,

If someone were to get access to a large account and have the money sent to a Pay Pal account, then Kiva has an issue to make whole the lender AFTER money is stolen.  If a short research to ensure that the correct individual is receiving the money protects lenders, I think that is OK. 

Another consideration; Pay Pal is gifting its services.  If an individual is transfering from a credit card to Kiva and then refunding to Pay Pal, it could cost Pay Pal while giving frequent flyer miles or other credit card benefits to the lender.  Pay Pal might see some patterns and ask that as a term of this courtesy of free Pay Pal transfers that Kiva put some restraints on some types of transactions.

Colette

[iampaul]

If someone were to get access to a large account and have the money sent to a Pay Pal account, then Kiva has an issue to make whole the lender AFTER money is stolen.  If a short research to ensure that the correct individual is receiving the money protects lenders, I think that is OK.

I am under the impression that is the purpose of Kiva's CFO manually reviewing and approving every single withdrawal request regardless of the size, which she does already. Ali has stated to me that the CFO gives large and unusual transaction requests extra scrutiny. So, why add another layer of BS? How has the message referred to by RichardF made any additional assurance that the correct person is receiving the funds? It would appear that the person who received the message does not have a postal mailing address on file with Kiva. I don't see how Kiva has any assurance that the response they receive will include the correct mailing address rather than that of the same theoretical scammer who you hint may have already gained access to this theoretical Kiva account and initiated this theoretical pattern of large simultaneous deposits and withdrawals.

Another consideration; Pay Pal is gifting its services.  If an individual is transfering from a credit card to Kiva and then refunding to Pay Pal, it could cost Pay Pal while giving frequent flyer miles or other credit card benefits to the lender.

The source of the funds that are transferred from my PayPal account to Kiva are my business with PayPal and not information to which Kiva is entitled. Any cost to *PayPal* over frequent flier miles or any other bonus arrangement I may have with a credit card company I might use in conjunction with my PayPal account to Kiva or any other payee is similarly between me and PayPal and none of the business of the payee.

Pay Pal might see some patterns and ask that as a term of this courtesy of free Pay Pal transfers that Kiva put some restraints on some types of transactions.

I would hope that Kiva would say so to their loyal lenders rather than making up other stories about the reasons.


Paul

*edit: typo

[Harvey:)]

Paul,

If someone were to get access to a large account and have the money sent to a Pay Pal account, then Kiva has an issue to make whole the lender AFTER money is stolen.  If a short research to ensure that the correct individual is receiving the money protects lenders, I think that is OK.  

Another consideration; Pay Pal is gifting its services.  If an individual is transfering from a credit card to Kiva and then refunding to Pay Pal, it could cost Pay Pal while giving frequent flyer miles or other credit card benefits to the lender.  Pay Pal might see some patterns and ask that as a term of this courtesy of free Pay Pal transfers that Kiva put some restraints on some types of transactions.

Colette

Richard is not "someone". Richard is Richard and he has been lending for years. I am sure Richard is using the same PayPal account and e-mail address (for withdrawals) that he has been using for years. If Kiva cannot distinquish between long time lenders like Richard (and his unchanged e-mail address for his PayPal account) and some newbie scammer who has never withdrawn cash before, then Kiva has even more problems than we suspected. In addition, Kiva is doing the withdrawals by hand. Kiva can see who is withdrawing the money and to what account it is going.  

Contacting Richard to tell him Kiva wants his address and they will send him a check is not research. Kiva is simply telling Richard (and some other long time lenders) that they will now receive a check for withdrawal funds instead of a fund transfer to PayPal. (Actual research would consist of verification that Richard's information is correct, not telling him that they are altering how he receives his money.)

My understanding of the fraud issue is that scammers were setting up new Kiva accounts using gift certificates and then withdrawing the money from those accounts to PayPal. Again, Kiva should be able to distinquish between old time lenders like Richard who has been withdrawing funds to the same account for years and new lenders/possible scammers, who are withdrawing money after a short time. Verifying those new lenders and their accounts would make some sense. Hassling older lenders* who have unchanged information makes no sense at all.

PayPal is gifting its services (electronic money tansfers) to Kiva. PayPal is making a fortune off of PayPal's other money transfers and, like many large and wealthy corporations who give gifts to nonprofits, PayPal is gifting its services to Kiva. I am quite sure PayPal is also writing off those gifted services when it comes time for taxes to be paid so PayPal is benefitting too. (I highly doubt that PayPal has asked Kiva to put restrictions on some types of transactions or that PayPal even cares how people add or withdraw their money from Kiva. Kiva transactions are a tiny fraction of PayPal's total number of transactions.)


*  "older lenders" as in "established lenders" or "long time lenders" (not as in old or aged, LOL)

[RichardF]

Hassling older lenders...

 

[tomviolence]

Interesting developements ...

One thing to remember is that this does protect long term lenders. If you have a large amount sitting there, and some eastern european script kiddie hacks your account, would you prefer he gets his dosh super quickly ? After all, it is a big account ...

Even if the paypal address is the same, the hacker might have access to the paypal account too. (Note - use different passwords for paypal and kiva)

Realisticly, I would think that people with large amounts of money in Kiva check up on it fairly regularly. While one could imagine being on vacation or getting ill and not being on top of your kiva account, the monthly payments make a fairly long period of time to be away.

I would like to know what hacking problems they have and what secuity measures they are using to prevent it. Just sending checks or having the withdrawal requests sit on a desk for three weeks does not increase the security of our accounts, but rather mitigates the effects of being hacked.

Perhaps, what would be better is to move away from payp[al as the single source of payments, but allow use of bank accounts or credit cards directly. Even if people end up paying 2-5% on top of their loan, it might be enough of an advantage for some to lend where other wise they would not

[Patricia SF]

How many days does it take to withdraw money from kiva these days?

I'm posting this information because the above question comes up every now and then:

Requested withdrawal on 2/16/11 (evening). 
Withdrawal credited to my PayPal account on 2/22/11.