If kiva ever manages to give a small interest on the loans, I expect it explode in popularity. But there's probably huge legal hurdles to doing that? Or are they ideologically opposed?
Probably a bit of both. At present I don't see why they shouldn't be at least as popular as a normal charitable donation. With Kiva, your money goes to some real individual, they use it to build their business, tell you about what they did, then the give the money back - and the cycle repeats indefinitely. One donation lasts forever.
