I’m thinking of doing this soon, but I still need to check whether it is possible.
Get an airline miles credit card or other rewards card.
Use the card to lend money through Kiva.org. Since this goes through paypal, I believe this should count as a purchase, thus adding to your miles.
Get the money returned through Kiva; withdraw it onto a debit card connected to a checking account, thus not subtracting from your credit card’s “Net Purchases”.
Repeat for free (discounting time cost) utilons and miles.
The more capital you have, the more you can make at any given point.
ETA: This is probably a bad idea, as it could be seen as fraud. I failed to realize this when I first posted it.
You assume that Kiva pays nothing for paypal money transfer or the credit card.
It’s plausible that Kiva pays that sum from the interest of the loans. It might also be that Kiva has indeed a deal with Paypal that allows them to receive money for free. If they have a deal somewhere in that deal it could be a clause that this doesn’t count as a purchase.
You might trigger some fraud detection system if you try to do that with significant amounts of money. Maybe you even signed somewhere a clause that allows your bank, paypal or kiva to sue you for fraud.
In short, keep in mind that the system has lots of people with an incentive to prevent exploitation and it’s unlikely that you managed to find a useful exploit that 1) bypasses all the checks and balances, and 2) if it ever did exist, was not already found and closed.
In addition, if you want to make money because a system of an organisation is broken, don’t screw organizations like Kiva that produce a lot of public good.
I was assuming initially that there would be fees charged, but they would be low enough that it would still be worth it.
I had not thought of this being considered fraud. In hindsight, it seems obvious; since it is most likely not worth the trouble of looking through everything I have ever signed, I’m going to shelve this idea.
I’m thinking of doing this soon, but I still need to check whether it is possible.
Get an airline miles credit card or other rewards card.
Use the card to lend money through Kiva.org. Since this goes through paypal, I believe this should count as a purchase, thus adding to your miles.
Get the money returned through Kiva; withdraw it onto a debit card connected to a checking account, thus not subtracting from your credit card’s “Net Purchases”.
Repeat for free (discounting time cost) utilons and miles.
The more capital you have, the more you can make at any given point.
ETA: This is probably a bad idea, as it could be seen as fraud. I failed to realize this when I first posted it.
You assume that Kiva pays nothing for paypal money transfer or the credit card.
It’s plausible that Kiva pays that sum from the interest of the loans. It might also be that Kiva has indeed a deal with Paypal that allows them to receive money for free. If they have a deal somewhere in that deal it could be a clause that this doesn’t count as a purchase.
You might trigger some fraud detection system if you try to do that with significant amounts of money. Maybe you even signed somewhere a clause that allows your bank, paypal or kiva to sue you for fraud.
In short, keep in mind that the system has lots of people with an incentive to prevent exploitation and it’s unlikely that you managed to find a useful exploit that 1) bypasses all the checks and balances, and 2) if it ever did exist, was not already found and closed.
In addition, if you want to make money because a system of an organisation is broken, don’t screw organizations like Kiva that produce a lot of public good.
What part of this is screwing Kiva? Temporarily lending money then getting it back is what Kiva is for.
I interpreted the suggestion is being about fastly moving money into and out of Kiva and not doing loans with the usual maturation time.
I was assuming initially that there would be fees charged, but they would be low enough that it would still be worth it.
I had not thought of this being considered fraud. In hindsight, it seems obvious; since it is most likely not worth the trouble of looking through everything I have ever signed, I’m going to shelve this idea.