While most research on microfinance is concerned with whether or not microfinance has had a sufficient “impact” on women borrowers, whether in terms of poverty alleviation or empowerment, I show instead that it is the working class loan officers, mostly men, who benefit most from this burgeoning financial industry in India. Women clients, on the other hand, engage with microfinance in diverse ways: they organize other neighborhood women into risk pools required by the microfinance companies, they use loans to pay school fees or medical expenses, and sometimes, they might invest their loans in a micro-entrepreneurial venture. But these working class women usually politely refuse offers of empowerment from the well-meaning microfinance providers, thus troubling taken-for-granted notions of who constitutes a poor woman in India and how loans or training can help them. A book manuscript based on this work, When Women Pay Up: Power, Profit, and Personhood in Global Microfinance is currently in production.