I think it can work as long as all the same principles of the Lending section are applied here. I think that reputable persons would love such service despite the high interest rate that they will occur when they will pay the loan. I also think that there would be much lower cases in here as in the Lending sections most of the borrowing is not in big amounts of money, sure there are some but not a lot of them. So based on these thoughts you can go ahead and try, just always abide by the rules of the Lending section to be free from scamming, never go first unless a very trusted member is asking for it and always ask for collateral. This collateral brings back another question which make this idea not working, if gamblers had something as collateral they would be playing it and not asking for a loan.