P2P-Banking.com

Today the first loan application of a borrower from Kenya was uploaded at MyC4.com. Rose Njeri runs a toys and decoration shop and wants a 2000 Euro loan to buy more products in Dubai. The loan term is 9 months, the maximum wanted interest rate is 15.5% (but currently loans at MyC4 all close at lower lender interest rates). Kenya is the third country MyC4 services after Uganda and Ivory Coast. The local partner (provider) in Kenya is Growth Africa.

The Netherlands will possibly be the first country where a law will be changed in reaction to peer to peer lending. Peer to peer lending in all countries is regulated by national laws but so far these did apply to all financial institutions and did not have specific provisions for peer to peer lending.

Dutch treasury secretary Bos says he sees the need to amend existing laws. In the Netherlands there have been parliament debates and regulation hassles triggered by the launch of p2p lending service Boober.nl in February 2007.

(Sources: 1, 2)

13 minute video (careful the video is >300 MB, requires fast internet connection) on MyC4. MyC4 facilitates peer to peer microloans to African entrepreneurs.

The video shows the situation in Uganda and many borrowers who talk about their plans. During an audience the founder gets praise by the wife of the president of Uganda for the concept.

Highly recommended viewing.

Canadian Communitylend.com started a blog. The first post in the Communitylend blog is "links for 2007-11-01". Odd post to start a blog for a new service. I expected more excitement and insights. Maybe it was not intended to be public and rather a test.

Globefunder is (still) announcing to launch its peer-to-peer lending service soon.

To keep you occupied reading while waiting, P2P-banking.com has gathered some tidbits of information on Globefunder (US launch):

• Maximum loan amount will be 25000 US$
• Minimum credit score for applying borrowers will be 640
• Globefunder will use data of Experian, CSC and eDominate to screen borrowers