Correction: Initially, we wrote that you’ll get the $25 after cashing out the promotional KIVA loan. However, multiple readers point out correctly that buried in the fine print it’s clear that the promotional $25 goes back to the Paypal charity account, not to your own.Â
We’ve now updated the post to reflect the correct details.
The Offer
- Loan someone $25 or more through the KIVA loan system with Paypal payment and Paypal will give you another $25 to loan out
You’ll usually get back the money loaned out so you’ll end up laying out $25 and getting back $50 after the loans are repaid.
The Fine Print
- Offer begins September 30th, 2016 and ends October 10, 2016
- $25 KIVA credit will become available on or around October 17 to be used toward making another KIVA loan
- Offer is limited to one per person
- Kiva credit is valid until December 31, 2016
- Offer is limited to the first 10,000 people to make a loan through this campaign
Our Verdict
Some people use KIVA regularly as a means of manufacturing credit card spend to meet a signup bonus and the like.
Personally, I’ve never done KIVA before and don’t have time at the moment to figure it out, but for someone who knows the system or wants to get their feet wet with KIVA, now would be the time.
You won’t get back anything more than the $25 you put in, the only gain would be for the good of the recipient of the loan.
If you actually took advantage of this deal, you’ll find that the money actually ultimately went back to the person’s account and NOT Paypal. So in essence it was a free $25.00. I am a regular lender on Kiva anyway (this is the best way to unload $200 and $100 gift cards from the office stores and rebate gift cards) so this helped make up for some delinquent loans.
@DB @TG @Gabe You are correct, I missed that line in the fine print.
The money goes back to Paypal, not to us, so there’s no money to be made here. I updated the post.
TG is absolutely right. please specify it in the post or remove it.
“The additional $25 Kiva credit is being provided by PayPal’s Corporate Advised Fund. The credit must be used to make a loan to a borrower outside of the U.S. The credit is not tax-deductible; and if repaid, is repaid to PayPal’s Donor Advised Fund at Kiva, not the participant’s account. ”
You don’t make any money from this.
ok I’m little confused. my 1st time lending on kiva.
I loaned $25 + $3.75 oversight to help a retailer get some inventory. Kiva said 97% of loans get repaid. Will I get back $25 plus little interest? ($3.75 was just help administer the loan I think.) The other $25 match goes to Paypal or will I get $0 back?
Was hoping to get $50 back but am fine with $0 if it helps small business guy get going.
$25 match goes to PayPal. You don’t earn interest on any kiva loans either. You make the loans out in good faith and to help others. You most likely will get your $25 back but it may be less.
Guys, you might want to kill this thread. This is one of their ‘promotional’ credits; you choose the borrower but it gets repaid to kiva
It gets repaid to your Kiva account to loan again or withdraw (maybe after an additional loan, I’m not clear). It doesn’t go into Kiva’s bankroll.
Appears to still be available. I went through the link and after lending the initial $25 via CC it asked for an email to which the next $25 should be sent.
There is a box you can check to avoid joining the “Paypal team”- thanks to Andrea for the warning on that one. In all it took about 3 minutes, but I already have a Kiva account so I don’t recall how long that initial setup takes.
And btw, it’s super easy to lend on Kiva.
how do we know if the 10,000 limit has been reached yet?
Did this yesterday, it said I’d get the credit before I did it. Maybe due to the credit not being available until October 17, I don’t know as it wasn’t very clear, but after doing the loan there was no mention of the credit. Furthermore I somehow “joined” a “paypal team” so my inbox is cluttered with emails from my apparent team members informing Paypal they did not get the credit. So YMMV, at this point not sure what’s going on. Really surprising how unnecessarily confusing it is…or maybe it’s not surprising at all, it is paypal after all.
It’s been 6 days since they sent out the promotion email so I doubt there are any quota left.