P2P-Banking.com

Kiva did billboard advertising on highway 101. Apparently the ad was sponsored by Paypal.

Matt Flannery of Kiva speculates whether the board brings 125 additional visits per day to the website (0.04% conversion rate) or if user growth on the sampled weeks had other causes.

(Photo Source)

Credit card issuer Advanta entered into a partnership with Kiva. The initiative is called KivaB4BProject and Advanta will match the loans made by business card holders with up to 200 US$ per card. Card holders simply select a business owner to sponsor through Kiva and make a grant using their Advanta Business Card. Advanta matches that grant, dollar for dollar, and Kiva distributes the total resulting funds.

The loans funded by this project can be seen on this Kiva lender page. Already contributed to more than 500 loans.

When the project was announced at Advanta's headquarters, Advanta flew in Kiva borrower Senerita Lilli a dressmaker from Samoa to share her story. 

Prosper will run television ads (preview them online). The TV spots will be aired in test markets starting this week.

MyC4 has just published a quarterly magazine to accompany it's website. The first issue of Change has 20 pages, looks stylish and has lots of information (e.g. Senegal will be the next market, where loans are available to borrowers starting in June). Here is what MyC4 says about it's magazine:

We have just released the very first issue of CHANGE - the magazine that comes all way around MyC4: Vision, business model, partners, supporters, etc.

Yesterday the headline of Dutch De Financiele Telegraph read "ABN AMRO brings together borrowers and lenders". ABN Amro is a large bank in the Netherlands. The article mentioned Boober and that ABN Amro is offering a different service.

So what is ABN Amro offering? P2P lending?

Actually the service in question can be found on this page and it is a free download document that lenders and borrowers can use to agree on a loan contract between them. Other the supplying the download ABN Amro is not involved in any resulting loans. In fact the site states (in Dutch):

… The general information on this page has not been meant as a recommendation. ABN Amro will not take liability …

I guess that can be filed under marketing using the 'peer-to-peer loan' buzz or at best under customer service.

Prosper.com is actively promoting it's marketplace to hedge funds.

Prosper is America’s largest peer-to-peer marketplace with over 600,000 members,” stated Kirk Inglis, CFO of Prosper. “As credit markets experience unprecedented changes, institutional lenders, including hedge funds, are using Prosper to diversify portfolio returns without the lack of transparency and fees associated with structured consumer debt products.

(via ProsperousLand)

Another recent Prosper related topic was the concern raised by lenders that in select states Prosper stops any collection activities on small loans, if the borrower sends a Cease-and-Desist letter (the example given is a 2,500 US$ loan in Texas). The author of the blog post argues that the risks for lenders rise, if this example really shows overall practise.

Moreover, they won't pursue legal action to recover small loans. So all small loans are now risky since the borrower has an easy method to halt payment, collections and legal proceedings. Prosper simply seems unwilling to go after small borrowers.

Finally, even for larger loans, it seems unsafe to lend, since Prosper will only sue in select states. I don't recall Prosper saying anything about selective enforcement in my many lender agreements, but before I put another penny into Prosper, you can be damn sure I will ask them what states they will take legal action in and what the minimum loan amount is for which they will sue.

In an email newsletter Zopa Italy encouraged its member to spread the word about Zopa to friends and relatives. Zopa says it is for 'a good reason': Zopa Italy pledges to lend $1 on Kiva for each new member that registers at Zopa Italy before January 15th.
Everybody can monitor how much Zopa invested on this lender page at Kiva.

I am sure that Kiva will highly appreciate this promotion, a target audience that is already interested in p2p lending gets introduced to Kiva's concept. But I am not sure if that is a good marketing campaign for Zopa. Should the lenders decide Kiva is an interesting concept they might lend their money at Kiva instead of at Zopa. Maybe Zopa speculates lenders will invest in both. Or Zopa wants the added social angle to increase chances of press coverage.

What do you think? Discuss this at the Zopa forum. 

(Source: Email newsletter from Zopa Italy, Dec. 27th)

Today for all new loans the interest rates at Lendingclub.com increase by 0.5 percent. At Lendingclub, unlike other p2p lending sites, the platform not the borrower sets the interest rate (based on credit grade). The increase was in reaction to rising borrower demand after Lendingclub eliminated state loan rate caps last week by going nationwide.

As a lender you can profit furthermore from two current promotions at Lendingclub. You get a 5% cash bonus if you lend 5,000 US$ or more by Feb. 3, 2008 (max. 20,000 per lender). Plus you get a 25 US$ signup bonus, if you sign up through this referral link.

Questions? Suggestions? Use the Lendingclub forum.

With several posts by CEO Chris Larsen Prosper.com starts blogging.

Welcome to the new Prosper Blog.

We’ll be using this blog to create a place to find up-to-the-minute news on the latest Prosper enhancements, enlightening and thoughtful Personal Finance opinions, touching Prosper Member Stories, and more. Your contributions are welcome. Please feel free to submit comments to any of the blog posts or send new articles and ideas to us at blog @ prosper.com (please remove spaces before using this email address) or submit a guest post.

We’ll be adding in posts regularly, so please stop back in again soon.

Warmly,

Prosper

The blog has been in preparation for some time. I believe we can look forward to some interesting articles by Prosper staff, borrowers, lenders and other guest writers.

MyC4 users can now easily give someone a MyC4 account as Christmas gift. With a 6 step process the user creates an account, transfers money and prints a christmas voucher.
The recipient is all set to start investing in loans.

Is this a clever viral marketing idea? Post your take on this in the wiseclerk forum!