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By definition, a loan is giving someone something and getting it back.

By all intents and purposes, when you deposit money into a bank it is a loan - secured or not. The bank uses the money for investments, and pays the person who made the deposit a bit of interest based on the return on investment. It requires a flip in perspective to realize this, as culture has taught us that only banks can give loans...

But we do it everyday. Every day is a negotiation of trust with things related to finance. Simply logging onto the internet and browsing websites is a loan of the user's time and attention. The sites that give the best return on investment in the perspective of the user are the ones which they visit most. Large groups of people dictate whether a site is successful - it works... oddly, like a bank.

So if we flip perspective on this, where every person is a bank and institutions such as Ginko Financial are debtors... we place the user, the customer, in charge. And large groups of silly people really do run the world, which scares the heck out of sane people. No wonder this perspective isn't used often. :-)