Loaning money for example is going to cost you more money so in fact you have to pay for money. But you should only take a loan for something important that you need in live. Do not take a loan if you do not have a good reason to do so.
Yeah if you make a loan in loan service provider you must includ or give an a valid collateral to make your loan approve like in this forum but if you make loan just consider that you are borrowed is you can pay for it to dont get any problem.
If there will not be an escrow then I think the better way is to have valid id's shown also if the loaner or borrower just wont mind. There have been a lot of scams with this things. Maybe that could minimize this from happening over and over again.
Well we are in cyber world even though you are going to show someone a valid id you can just google it for there are a lot of identity theft's that are already happening. So I would say that it is still not guaranteed, in cyber world it is really hard to build trust for the people especially when there is a monetary value involved.