[waitwhat]

Sometimes you'll see "pre-funded" loans where the person has approved the partner, the partner funded them and then Kiva is used to reimburse the partner.

You're not entirely accurate when you write "sometimes". According to the process on the Kiva website http://www.kiva.org/about/how/even-more all loans are pre-disbursed, and in 5 minutes clicking around earlier, I couldn't find a single one which wasn't.

With pre-disbursed loans, as you say, Kiva is used to reimburse the partner, not the person behind the picture on the website (because those people already have their money.) So I stand behind what I said: Kiva users are making zero-interest, low-risk, short-term loans to micro-finance institutions.

The difference between $100 in the bank and $100 in Kiva is that Kiva pretends to put a face on the person this $100 is being lent back out to. They even give an illusion of choice, they appear to let you pick and choose who gets funded! Meanwhile my bank doesn't pretend to tell me who "my" $100 is lent back out to, and they certainly don't pretend to let me choose whose mortgage application gets funded, and whose doesn't.