Oh yeah, batch loans! 😍 The thing you're talking about in Arizona is common in Caribbean communities (and I'm sure other parts of the world) where they're known as pardnas - it's how many Caribbean people got together the deposit to buy a house when they came to England. I'm pretty sure it's also the foundation of the credit union movement although that brings a third party into play, the union itself, a bit like the escrow account you're talking about. The key thing, though, is that these are all community initiatives, outside traditional banking and finance institutions (although I think credit unions are regulated through the FCA in the UK now).

All these ideas informed my ambitions for the Saturday Savers Club, especially with the advent of the EDSI token (EDS as was). EDSI is pegged to 1 HIVE (although it can be bought and sold for more and less once it comes into circulation), and, for every EDSI in circulation there is 1 HIVE sitting powered up in the @eddie-earner account. The income derived from the powered up HIVE is shared each week in a liquid HIVE payment to holders of the token. There's so much more in the plans and, critically, for me, the tokens are backed by HIVE assets. But the main thing here is I loved such a simple model for creating wealth, with such a low cost of entry: 1 HIVE, easy to understand and anyone could take part with no other barriers.

We haven't got as far as loans although that is part of my ideas, we've focused on the getting-whatever-resources-you-can-together in a regular discipline of saving - which you have to have for peer to peer loans to work. I was interested in @ecoinstant's Ecobank, too, but we've never quite got to discussing that - there's always been some other distraction.

So it looks like the technology will be there, too, from the comments!