Welcome to Kiva Muslims! Named after the same team on Kiva, the goal of this site is to promote and support Muslims using Kiva by identifying interest-free loans. Because Kiva is halal!
Looking to make a loan on Kiva that’s interest-free and islamically-compatible? Use one of the partners below, or the list in the navigation bar (“Riba-Free Kiva Loans”):
Partners with exclusively Islamic loans:
- Abaarso School of Science and Technology (Somalia) — they offer interest-free loans in Somalia for higher education. They also keep 8% of any loan repaid to help support borrowers who can’t afford tuition. Details here.
- Al-Amal Microfinance Bank (Yemen) — verified by Kiva in this news post.
- American University of Central Asia: they provide interest-free student loans in Asia. Awesome! Details here.
- Barefoot Power (Tanzania) — they provide safe, efficient energy alternatives to kerosene lamps. See this news post.
- PT Ruma (Indonesia) — they provide training in a commission-based cellphone sales opportunity. See this news post.
- Nuru Energy (Africa) offers interest-free sales of rechargable LED lights to Kiva borrowers.
- Yayasan Sosial Bina Sejahtera (Indonesia) offer interest-free loans to students for higher education.
Partners with some Islamic loans:
These partners include mixed loans. You need to read the description to determine if it complies with Islamic finance rules or not.
- Palestine for Credit & Development (FATEN) (Palestine) — verified by emailing them personally.
- Asasah (Pakistan) — A Pakistan-national MFI that started offering islamically-complaint microfinance loans in 2011 under the banner of “murabaha” or “qard hassanah.”
- Jerusalem Interest-Free Microfinance Fund Limited (Jerusalem) — a pilot project since 2013 that offers shari’ah compliant loans in the Jerusalem area.
About Kiva
Kiva is a crowd-source microfinance funding platform; different microfinance companies (some of which use Islamic principles) in developing countries post profiles of those who are in need of a business loan to elevate themselves out of poverty; Kiva collects the loan internationally, and sends it to a local bank, who administers the loan.
It’s a great way to help your brothers in sisters who are in need in countries like Palestine. If you decide to sign up, you can click on this link to browse a large number of loans that are complaint with Islamic finance.
Read more about this on the details page.
Information about the Lists of Microfinance Institutes
We’re in the process of contacting MFIs in various countries to verifying which ones use Islamic microfinance. You can see which ones are verified to use Islamic finance. All of our results are posted as news items; just search this site for the partner name. We ask them, and post whatever they say, good or bad.
Note that you probably still need to check if each individual loan is interest free, for traditional micro-finance institutes. See details on the 0% Interest Loans page. But the flip side of this is any MFI that we list any partner that offers a 0% loan below, even if we didn’t talk to them directly.
Also, some partners, by design, offer exclusively 0% (interest-free) loans.
These links below point to the Field Partner profile page. Read the risk rating and other stuff, then click on the link “See all fundraising loans from this field partner” (on the right side; just search for the text).
Kiva Muslims 
assalam alaikum thanks for bringing this to light. I am wondering though,
the Al-Amal Microfinance Bank stats on Kiva says
Average Interest Rate and Fees Borrowers Pay (Portfolio Yield) 37.34%
Any comments?
Wa’alikum as-salaam wa rahmatullah,
@Abdullah the heading is “Average Interest Rates and Fees.” Even without interest, MFIs charge fees to cover their costs (and sometimes fund other parts of their business).
In our Islamic Finance class, we discussed the permissibility of buying a laptop for $1000 and selling it for $1200 to someone. This is one of the models that FATEN at least uses, and other Islamic MFIs too.
Wallahu a’lam. Let me know if you have any more questions, or if that answers it sufficiently.
Also I believe Kiva requires all the borrowers to pay interest
@Omar Kiva does not require borrowers to pay interest. In fact, Kiva has nothing to do with the loan itself — they only raise the funds and send it to the local microfinance institute. See the details page — Kiva does not take or give interest. Nor do all microfinance institutes (“Field Partners”) that work with Kiva deal with interest.
I suggest you read the details page. It contains a lot of information on this, and other issues.
Great idea! To have one set of people raise funds and get trusted partners to loan it to those who need it. InshaAllah you will be successful.
JZK for compiling these. Here is a recent post by Kiva on islamic products. They also mention that the loan pages should mention the islamic product (ex: musharaka) being used but I have not seen it yet. However I did read that “Currently, Kiva’s partners in Iraq, Palestine, and Yemen are offering Muslim lending products.”
Jazakumullahu khayran. That link is mentioned in the news post about FATEN (in their response to me). Sadly, not all loans from such partners are interest-free.
Assalam alaikum. I am wondering about Agro Capital Management (Ukraine). Do we have details on the fees they charge so we can validate if its truly shariah compliant? I.e. if they charge a 10% late fee per month, but they don’t call it interest. it still would be considered riba 😦
@Abdullah I’ll add Kiva Zip. I’ll remove ACM, because their partner page now says that they do charge interest.
Wa’alikum as-salaam, I emailed and asked them, and Agro Capital Management doesn’t charge interest. Kiva wrote: “ACM is one of our “non-traditional partners” and does charge farmers a small service fee, however they do not charge interest on top of this.”
How about adding Kiva zip to the list? Those loans are direct and interest free!
Maybe post a sample loan as well
In the Introduction of your Kiva page. Why don’t you say what you say here about ribs free loans?
@Hadi it’s not that simple, although we do say that about the RSS filter. I’ve updated the page to be more explicit about this.
Good luck thanks a lot
Thanks for the use of the most important
also i think their is another issue that conflict with Islam rules which is .. where the money goes ? in which bank in America ? (for sure it will not be in the website ) ,,, ok then what will the bank will do with our money ? (for sure he will invest it ) .. i think its not a right choice to deal as muslims with Kiva
@omar it’s complicated. The money goes to an MFI (local bank) in the country of the borrower (eg. Palestine, Pakistan). They give the money to the borrower, and manage the loan (including recollection). This sometimes includes business training and other services to their customers/borrowers (which in turn, gives them a higher chance of getting their money back).
Often, they do “pre-disbursal,” which means they already lent the money to the person before they listed it on Kiva. In this case, it just recovers the money they already lent out, which they return back to us once the borrower repays.
In any case, I specifically sought out fatawa on Kiva. The actual loan is between borrowers and Kiva, which is not interest-based. Because that money is often reused in riba loans, the general ruling is that this is makruh, and Allah knows best.
However, once you deal with banks (Micro Finance Institutes, or MFIs in Kiva’s parlance) that don’t charge interest, I don’t see any problem with this. While there are greater concerns about micro-finance being effective as a whole, we Muslims should do our part to help wherever we can. As Allah says, “fastabiquw al-khayraat” which roughly means “race to everything good.”
I suggest you read the details page… (Interest is mentioned in the page)
Do Kiva borrowers pay any interest on their loans?
YESSS!!!, most borrowers on Kiva do pay interest to Kiva’s local Field Partners in some form. Kiva and Kiva lenders do not receive interest on Kiva loans.
@AbdulAziz Ibrahim: that’s exactly the point: to find a list of field partners that don’t charge interest to borrowers. There are lots of field partners who don’t charge interest, Muslim ones and non-Muslim ones.