Enforce repayment of loan

Ecosystem Dapps
1

Hello everyone,

I am getting started with Celo in order to compete in the “Make it Mobile Hackathon”. So apologies in advance if my question is out of place or has been discussed somewhere else.

My question revolves around micro-loans in the Celo network. One nice feature that I read about was the identity verification of users based on the smartphone (Verification - Celo Docs).

My use-case is basically a micro-loan and the repayment process afterwards: if Alice borrows 10 cUSD from Bob today and they agree upon a 12 month loan, is there a way to “enforce” Alice to repay Bob? One naive option would be to have a smart contract observing Alice’s transactions and if needed redirecting a small percent fee of her transactions back to Bob to repay the loan. Nevertheless, this would not work because Alice could just buy a new phone or open a new wallet, thus bypassing this “control”.
It would be great to discuss possible different scenarios/suggestions.

Thanks for the help.

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I would say it depend on the approach you want to take. My opinion is, it would be better to incentivize good behaviour (loan repayment) and punish bad actors (temporary or permanent ban from loan platform?) instead of looking for an absolute way to guarantee repayment which is impossible in the case of an uncollaterized loan, there’s alway risk involved.
To revert to your question I don’t think the protocol as a way to “enforce” repayment currently but I might be wrong.

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