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Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation is partnering with Kiva to help New York City’s small business owners gain access to capital they need to grow their businesses.

Through the partnership, Deutsche Bank is providing USD 500,000 in seed funding for newly launched Kiva NYC to be used to match the loans raised on Kiva’s crowd-funding platform. This will allow the small business owners to double the fundraising speed of their loan request.

Recently marking its 10-year anniversary, Kiva is the global leader in crowd-funding microloans for entrepreneurs working to alleviate poverty worldwide. Through their community-based platform, Kiva Zip, the organization is broadening its reach to the United States – and reinserting the idea of “character into credit” – where communities are stepping in by providing vital 0% interest, crowd-funded loans to rising small business entrepreneurs.

With support from Deutsche Bank and other partners, Kiva NYC aims to serve 1,000 New York City small business owners over the next three years by providing them access to capital they need to grow their businesses.

In addition to matching loans, Deutsche Bank also provided funding to the New York Women’s Chamber of Commerce to support a Spanish-language Kiva NYC ambassador who will help Spanish-speaking women entrepreneurs in New York City take advantage of Kiva Zip’s platform to finance their enterprises.

Deutsche Bank and Kiva have a history of working together to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Last year, Deutsche Bank became the first global financial institution to partner with Kiva for a program that provided the Bank’s US employees the opportunity to directly finance a micro-entrepreneur of their choice via Kiva’s international online platform. To date, nearly 6,000 of the Bank’s US employees have made a loan through the program.

As a leader and trusted partner in the field of social finance, Deutsche Bank provides loans, investments and philanthropic grants to the microfinance sector towards the goal of enabling the poor throughout the developing world to access credit for self-employment as a poverty alleviation strategy. Over the last decade, Deutsche Bank has served more than 120 microfinance institutions in 50 countries with USD 215.5 million in capital benefitting as many as 2.8 million low-income entrepreneurs.

Learn more about the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation’s social investment efforts.

For further information on how to get involved with Kiva NYC, please visit: zip.kiva.org