Jamie,

A very insightful analysis. While there are plenty of "eerie" similarities, I think there are also a similar number of positive opportunities. To further your analysis, microfinance was born out of a social mission and needs to understand how to become more financially-oriented to reach the still untapped potential. Payday lending was born out of a financial mission(?) and needs to understand how to operate within a social-conscious paradigm or they will be simply wiped away from the market by public sentiment and a legislative pen.

I know I'm excited to be in a position to understand and help both of these models make the right tweaks.

For some of my thoughts on this see my blog entries as a Kiva Fellow:

http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/category/ghana/dylan-higgins/