Social lending is a type of borrowing, quite different to the normal personal loans and credit cards offered by financial institutions. Although it does involve a loan, it is not monitored by a traditional financial institution. It sounds like it could be a loan from someone you know and in a sense it is similar to that.

There has been a long existing, alleged trade-off between return on investment and allocation of financial capital towards positive environmental and/or social impact. Investing doesn't need to be so one sided. The world witnesses do investors that are good, pursuing a strategy called Impact investing today.