The effects of religious affiliation on lender-client relations in microfinance is an understudied area of research. This paper uses microfinance lending data obtained through Kiva, the online microfinance lending facilitator, to answer two questions: 1. What influence does the religious affiliation of the microfinance group have on the tendency for recipients of loans to repay? 2. On the effects of religion on lenders and recipients in online microfinance systems. Analysis finds that religious affiliation is not meaningfully correlated with loan repayment statistics, although further work is necessary. Lending behavior is found to be largely similar among lenders regardless of religious affiliation, with a few exceptions for specific loan targets. In parallel, I discuss challenges involved in aggregating and analyzing Kiva data and propose future work.

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