P2P-Banking.com

Some news from p2p lending in Asian markets:

Chinese PPdai.com (see earlier coverage) says it has received a first round of funding from Essentia Private equity. The amount was not disclosed.

On February 27th, Zopa's managing director Giles Andrews mentioned in a webchat "I have also been spending time in Asia and hope that we will launch in 2 very significant markets there in 2008, one of which we may even announce shortly….".
In the webchat Giles Andrews also said regarding the US market: "@Tealer We also think that our "competitors" over there are illegal, and I don't want to go to jail!".
Furthermore Zopa said it plans to launch an (optional) capital guarantee product in the UK market.

See earlier coverage of P2P-Banking.com on the p2p lending markets in Corea, China, India or Japan.

In a Techcrunch interview the concept of chinese startup Qifang.cn is explained. To deal with the problem that there usually are no credit histories available in China, Qifang will partner with the schools directly to let them verify the informations. Loan payments will be made directly to the educational institutions instead of the students

Luyi Chen of China Web2.0 Review has an interview with Jack Gu, founder of China's p2p lending service ppdai.com, which was covered here earlier.

Soon p2p lending via the internet will be available in the country with the largest population: China. Shanghai based startup Ppdai.com which is currently in its test period and open by invitation only, plans to launch in July. Two of the founders are former Microsoft employees.

Gu Shaofeng (Jack Gu), CTO of ppdai, told P2P-Banking.com: "Ppdai.com will be targeted at the small P2P loan in China (the root of P2P concept). The unique part is it emphasize the important of 'Friends', the concept of the Social Networking. Ppdai.com encourge users to lend to Friends, or friends'friend to reduce the risks."

As far as I can see the concept is a copy of the Prosper model (possibly without the groups). The minimum bid is only 50 Chinese Yuan - less then 7 US$.

According to the website, laws and regulation in China are not defining terms for p2p lending, but indirectly it can be assumed that p2p lending is not prohibited provided interest rates are not exceeding 4 times the interest rates of bank loans.

While browsing the site I noticed that the design is closely resembling designs of Smava, Prosper and in one occassion Lendingclub.

Smava original logo and homepage:

Ppdai imitation:

Prosper original bidding icons:

Ppdai copycat (text translated):