P2P-Banking.com

Lending Hub - an australian p2p lending site, which says it will launch in August or September 2008, has set an ambiguous aim: processing borrowing and lending applications in real time.

The Lending Hub system will check and process a borrowing application within less than a minute (assuming you have a traceable credit history and have provided all required information). Now instead of waiting at a bank or searching for your nearest branch we’ll be able to process your details in less time than it takes to grab a coffee!

If we require any physical documents (e.g. payslips or bank account statements) you can upload a scan directly to your Lending Hub account. No need to mail us anything (unless you really want to of course).

As do most p2p lending services, Lending Hub will not charge a fee for early repayment of loans, which it says is an advantage over most other lending services in Australia.

Lendinghub will be regulated under the Uniform Consumer Credit Code legislation.

You can also read a guest article by Ivan Martelli, Director of Lending Hub

PeerFX.com a p2p currency exchange that wants do to away with high margins and fees banks charge when exchanging currencies, announced to launch on August, 1st. Users will be able to change US and Canadian Dollars directly (USD, CAD).
Watch a video of the funding. The founders Robert Dunlop and Florence Leung gave away a 51% percent stake of the company for 250,000 CAN$ seed funding.

Personally, I am not convinced by the business model. For consumers there are less and less needs to actually exchange currencies in advance. You can nearly always pay with plastic. In Europe the realm of the Euro is expanding. And several European banks allow their account holders to withdraw cash from any ATM (of any bank) worldwide fee-free.
But maybe the situation is different between the US and Canada. What is your opinion on this, dear reader?

Apparently Peermint.com has participated in the New Ventures BC competition.
The deadline for round 3 is August, 13th.

First prize is 60,000 CAN$ in cash plus 100,000 CAN$ proof of concept award.

Update: Peermint made round 2 but is not among the 30 startups in round 3

Lendingclub.com has in a new release some new account management features for lenders.
Lendingclub is currently not open for registration of new lenders.

Accenture in cooperation with Gemius published a report (english, polish page) on the polish p2p lending market. The report looks at the parameters of the polish p2p lending sites Kokos (see our earlier interview with Kokos), Finansowo and Monetto. The report in detail shows the result of a survey of 1075 internet users on questions of various social lending aspects.

via thebankwatch.com

Zopa UK said it will introduce 'Young Markets' (Young36 and Young60) specifically for borrowers aged 20 to 25. The need for this arises from the fact that currently many applications are turned down - not because the borrowers have any negative marks on their credit history - rather they don't have sufficient history of debt.

Zopa will still check borrowers in this age group (identity, fraud, affordability, adress and employment). As long as they have no history of bad debt they will be approved for borrowing on the Young Market. 

The new young market segment will allow Zopa to advertise the service focussed on young borrowers, which are internet savvy and open to the p2p lending concept.

Source

On June 20th, Lendingclub.com filed a registration statement with the SEC to issue up to 600 million US$ in Member Payment Dependent Notes. The notes will be backed by loans and sold to lenders. The process for lenders remains pretty much the same as before the quiet period, only the legal setup will change to comply with regulation.

Link to SEC filing of Lending Club

Press release by Lendingclub regarding the SEC filing

Netbanker extracted some interesting data from the 100+ page Lendingclub filing. 

Globefunder's site got a new layout. It looks more structured and professional now.

Also it seems that Globefunder will open its d2c lending (d2c="direct to consumer") to individual lenders. Only in May an announcement of Globefunder sounded like under dtc lending the company would on the lender site be open only to institutional investors.

Now there are "Coming soon Lend Money to make money" signs on the new site. But it's not available yet. Clicking on them displays the message

We're sorry, that option isn't available yet at GlobeFunder.com. Please check back again soon, as we continue to make improvements to the site.

Since the new release, MyC4.com has encoutered repeated accounting problems, sometimes with wrong interest calculations, sometimes requiring correction of user account balances. 

Examples of incidents: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

MyC4's staff has been quick to respond to the problems and usually is fixing them fast.
But I believe the issue here is, that p2p lending through a foreign internet startup requires a great amount of trust. And while lenders are used to bugs in new internet application, they do expect a high standard when it comes to accounting. After all no user of online banking would accept that he has to check the interest calculations made by the bank. 

The MyC4 team did a good job developing the platform so far and earned at lot of trust; but if the problems persists this might be an obstacle to further growth. 

Fynanz announced a lending bonus.

We're excited to announce that we're giving you and other lenders who lend $3,000 or more, a 3% Lending Bonus. That's on top of the great rates that you're already earning as a lender through the Fynanz Student Loan Marketplace …

Lending Bonus is earned on the aggregate amount you lend across all the loans you make, provided you have lent at least $3,000 in loans between May 15th and September 15, 2008 up to a maximum of $50,000 in aggregate loans

Lenders can earn an additional 2%, if they refer at least 5 new lenders, which each lend 50 US$ minimum.

In a recent "Tips for Borrowers" post, Fynanz says it added 700 more approved schools whose students may apply for a Fynanz loan.