While you are right about lots of Kiva loans, you can pick what you lend to, which is what I do. I agree with you about the attractiveness of direct cash. One

While you are right about lots of Kiva loans, you can pick what you lend to, which is what I do. I agree with you about the attractiveness of direct cash. One thing to remember is microfinance has been around a long time. My guess is there is more evidence of effective microfinance than of direct payment. That is not to say direct payment isn't as effective but just to remind people while I think microfinance should have more evidence for effectiveness there has been some good research. Based on the initial success it has grown a ton. And conditions change (including the large amounts of money being thrown into micro-finance). Studying how effective it is today, how effective specific orgs are (Kiva, but also specific banks Kiva works with) and specific methods and factors (how much does interest rate matter, does purpose the funds will be put to matter...) is important. I think the rush to increase funding to microfinance has probably been good. You can suffer real costs to people by moving to slow and needing too much research. But I do think today, there should be more research going on (in a lean startup kind of way - what is successful, mini-experiments...).