Facility to add Kiva Credit regularly, automatically, to use with Auto-Lending

[Guest]

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[Duncan]

Hi all,

I'd like to be able to add a fixed amount of Kiva Credit to my account automatically every week, month, quarter, or year, etc. - like a standing order or standing instruction.  If I could do this I would be able to set up Auto-Lending so that new funds and redeemed funds in my account would always be lent out. This would let me build up a portfolio over time without having to visit Kiva.org manually every month or every quarter, add credit, and administer my loans.

It is technically possible for an organisation which uses PayPal to allow its customers to set up 'subscriptions', or recurring payments, which are authorisations to debit a fixed amount on a regular basis.

Please speak up here and tell Kiva through http://www.kiva.org/help/contact-us if you would also like this.

(It's plausible that Kiva may encounter capacity problems if lots of people constantly add Kiva Credit regularly, and there aren't enough borrowers -- but with recurring payments, I think Kiva would be in control and would be able to choose NOT to draw on standing instructions one month if there was an issue with capacity.)

Do you like this idea?

Best,
Duncan

[Jan & John]

Hi Duncan and welcome to Kiva Friends. 
Your ideas are interesting and I am sure there are other people would like a more hands-off approach to building and maintaining a Kiva portfolio.

I am one of those who *like* going to Kiva everyday and choosing my own loans.  It is that person to person aspect that drew me in and has kept me here.  I copy photos to a file that I use as a screen saver.  I write comments on the journals as loans are disbursed.  I have fun

I also can't say I have heard any resounding applause here at KF either for the autolending process.  I looked at it once, and did not apply.

And the big one for me would be that, while I personally haven't had any problems using Paypal, I think I would be hesitant to sign up for any automatic feature that affects my personal banking.

-jan-

[Duncan]

Hi Jan,

Thanks for your feedback.  Maybe my mentioning of the Auto-Lending feature distracted a little from the idea - because of course you wouldn't need to use it with Auto-Lending at all.

I also like choosing my loans!  But I might sometimes find it psychologically difficult to go through PayPal to put in (e.g.) $25 each month myself - it's the inconvenience of it, and just that wrench of thinking 'Darn, that's another $25 gone...'.  But for me, if I say 'OK, well, I'm going to be putting $25 into Kiva each month!' -- if I know that's going to happen for me automatically - then that's that: I know I won't need to spend time or energy worrying about doing it myself or keeping up that commitment.  Then it only becomes a bother if/when I don't have enough disposable income to keep it up, and I can log in to Kiva or PayPal and cancel the recurring payment, or put it off for a month.

So someone who doesn't like Auto-Lending could set this up, and Kiva/PayPal would e-mail you whenever a new payment was made into your account, and you could then log in and lend it out.  Perhaps you could instruct Kiva/PayPal to only take the next payment of $25 or whatever when you had less than a given amount of Kiva Credit already sitting in your account, so as to avoid a large amount of Kiva Credit building up unused.

I too like choosing my loans, but I'd want loans to happen ANYWAY even if I don't have time or don't get around to choosing one for myself.  So I'd quite like to say to Auto-Lending: 'IF more than $25 of Kiva Credit is sitting in my account for more than 7 days, THEN lend it out for me!', which would give me a week to make the choice for myself.  (But that's me; you wouldn't have to use Auto-Lending at all.)

I have a feeling that this could help to include some of those 'lurkers' who make one or two loans on Kiva and then go quiet.  I agree it might not be so applicable to a lot of Kiva Friends, but could help to extend Kiva's appeal to those who don't have so much time and fiery enthusiasm to devote to Kiva but who still would really like to use it to do good.

I also understand your reluctance to sign up to an automatic feature that affects your personal banking.  But again, that's probably something that people have different attitudes to depending on their background.  Lots of people in some countries (I'm thinking of the UK, but it's more widespread) are quite used to signing up to standing orders and direct debits to pay bills or regularly put a fixed amount of money into a savings account, and so on -- and so I'd expect those people to be comfortable with it.

Thanks for your welcome!

Duncan

[Diane R]

I currently have such "standing orders" to add a monthly amount to my accounts at DonorsChoose and Women for Women International, and have several recurring monthly debits directly to charitable organizations, so I think there's every possibility that Kiva could set up something similar if enough lenders requested it.

--Diane.

[cjp1973]

I will add it to my list of things to bring up with Gerard on Wednesday.

Charmaine

Edit:  oops forgot to change to KF liaison.  I will get the hang of this one of these days

[Duncan]

Thanks Diane and Charmaine.

Charmaine, thanks for raising this in your recent call with Gerard and pointing him to info about implementing automatic payments: http://www.kivafriends.org/index.php/topic,3276.msg75106.html#msg75106

Just in case it makes a difference, the suggestion was for automatic payments of Kiva Credit rather than automatic donations.  Of course, some of the automatic credit could be set as a donation just as you can with the present manual situation.

Thanks again, and looking forward to seeing if they implement it,

Duncan

[cjp1973]

Sorry Duncan, I wrote the wrong word.  Was working off of Donors Choose wording.  But yes it would be automatic kiva credit.

Charmaine

[granite]

Sorry for pulling an old topic back to the top but I would like to +1 this as well and I couldn't find any othe rmention of it.  I "launder" some of my Christmas gift money through Kiva.  Basically I make loans starting in January and try to time the pay back to december / january and then when the year is over a use that money to pay for Christmas bills and do the whole thing over again.  I still want to choose my loans but the ability to add credits to your account on a regular basis would prevent me from missing a week (which does sometimes happen).  Many places have the ability to add to your "wallet" automatically... it would be great to add to my Kiva wallet automatically.