P2P-Banking.com

Kiva repayments now immediately available for reinvestment

wiseclerk — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:35:17 +0000

In the past Kiva used to credit repayments to the lender accounts only after a loan was repaid in full.

That changed last week when I received the following email from Kiva:

We are happy to announce that Kiva will now return repayments to lenders
as soon as those repayments are received by Kiva. Because of this
change, you’ll be able to re-lend funds right away instead of waiting
until the end of the loan term. We hope you enjoy this new feature!

As a result of this change, $231.44 in Kiva Credit has been released to
you and is now available for you to use. You can re-lend these funds,
donate or withdraw them.

A breakdown of the repayments that are included in this amount is as
follows:
——————————————————————————-
SAMUEL GAKUNYI in Kenya (Activity: Farming)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$20.22
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=3103
——————————————————————————-
Aivale Leiataua in Samoa (Activity: Farming)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$18.15
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=8866
——————————————————————————-
Malia Maselino in Samoa (Activity: Crafts)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$15.50
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=11466
——————————————————————————-
Naoupu Leo in Samoa (Activity: Food Production/Sales)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$17.47
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=11475
——————————————————————————-
Ellsie Amani in Samoa (Activity: Crafts)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$15.53
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=11482
——————————————————————————-
Kilita Stowers in Samoa (Activity: Services)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$22.92
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=11483
——————————————————————————-
Maluai Iosia in Samoa (Activity: General Store)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$17.47
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=11485
——————————————————————————-
Fieta Tuala in Samoa (Activity: Food Production/Sales)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$15.47
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=11498
——————————————————————————-
Edwin Omar Palacios Borjas in Honduras (Activity: Clothing Sales)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$23.50
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=13060
——————————————————————————-
Juan Rostro Cano in Mexico (Activity: Home Products Sales)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$20.32
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=13129
——————————————————————————-
Ikram Aliyev in Azerbaijan (Activity: Farming)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$12.55
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=28525
——————————————————————————-
Maria Cedillo in Ecuador (Activity: Hardware)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$6.25
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=29034
——————————————————————————-
Arafa’s Mkombozi Group in Tanzania (Activity: Food Production/Sales)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$10.00
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=39644
——————————————————————————-
Estrellas Group in Bolivia (Activity: Traveling Sales)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$8.34
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=47403
——————————————————————————-
Deme (Appui mutuel) Group in Mali (Activity: Catering)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$3.58
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=54384
——————————————————————————-
Rosa Egoavil in Peru (Activity: Retail)
You Loaned:$25.00
Total Repaid So Far:$4.17
View loan profile at:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=54700

To view your Kiva loan portfolio go to:
http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=account

If you have more questions about Kiva’s repayment policies, please visit our Help Center:
http://www.kiva.org/about/help

Best wishes,

- The Kiva Team

I am looking forward to lend some money in the next days.

It takes weeks to withdraw money from my Kiva account

wiseclerk — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:03:59 +0000

When I decided to withdraw some money from my Kiva account, I was informed:

This email confirms your withdrawal request of $25.00. You can expect the funds to be deposited into your paypal account within 1-3 weeks.

This astonished me. The withdrawal is conducted via paypal (as is the upload). The upload was almost instantly. Therefore I did not expect the withdrawal to take weeks.

BTW: So far my Kiva loans all pay on time.

Some Prosper news

wiseclerk — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:00:47 +0000

Short news update on Prosper.com developments:

Changes at the Prosper management team: John Witchel (former CTO) and Tom Pigoski are no longer listed as part of the management team. A comment on this blog post indicates that John Witchel has left the company while Tom Pigoski is on family leave. Chris Denend is now CTO.
Prosper says it will enable faster listings for qualified borrowers. In a streamlined process some borrowers may post loan listings without adding a title, description or picture.
Reading statistics published by Prosper? Have a good look on the definitions! In the market survey results, published on Aug. 12th, it looks like on some parameters the year to date figures for 2008 are rising compared to 2007. However looking in the definitions, Prosper compares 7 months in 2008 to 6 months in 2007. (quote:
2008 Year-to-Date: January 1, 2008 through July 31, 2008.
2007 Year-to-Date: January 1, 2007 through June 30, 2007.)

Marketing - Smava asks users to videotape their experiences

wiseclerk — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:45:00 +0000

German p2p lending service Smava has sent its lenders an email asking them to produce short videos telling their personal experiences using Smava. Smava offers 50 Euro (approx. 75 US$) for each user generated video that is sent to Smava and published.

Three (older) videos by Smava lenders can be viewed here.

Zopa UK raises fees for new lenders

wiseclerk — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:34:23 +0000

Zopa UK has raised fees for new lenders to 1% (annual of capital outstanding). Old lenders continue to be served at the 0.5% fee.

MyC4 starts offering loans in Rwanda next week

wiseclerk — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:30:45 +0000

MyC4.com will start to offer loans in Rwanda next week. This is the fourth country MyC4 is lending at, after Uganda, Kenya and Cote d’Ivoire. Mads Kjaer, CEO of MyC4, is quoted that Ghana, Tanzania, Senegal and South Africa will follow. In 2009 he aims to serve borrowers in 20 countries in Africa. (Source)

In a danish television video (15 min, danish language), which was broadcastes yesterday, MyC4 is presented as a good alternative for investing and gains a recommendation of MyBanker.dk, a website comparing banks.

Maneo to introduce p2p lending in Japan

wiseclerk — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:35:46 +0000

Maneo.jp aims to be the first active p2p lending service in Japan. Their mission statement (from a press release):

maneo Inc. plans to offer a user friendly and highly secure online community for people to borrow and lend money through an online auction system. maneo is about helping people lend and borrow money with each other, sidestepping the expense and inconvenience of traditional banks and consumer finance companies. People who want to borrow money register with maneo and create loan listings. Potential lenders register with maneo and bid on the loan listings they are interested in. maneo aggregates the bids with the lowest rates to fund the relevent loans and handles all of the administrative matters relating to the loans

Maneo received venture capital from J-Seed Ventures Inc. and Yasuda Enterprise Development Co., Ltd. The last funding round was in April 2008 for 80 million Yen (approx. 0.75 million US$). The first funding round was in April 2007.

The company website currently says “Coming in Summer 2008″. Zopa and Prosper also have announced plans for Japan, but no launch date has been set so far.

(Sources/further reading: 1, 2, 3 - all in japanese)

Young Market at Zopa UK launched

wiseclerk — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:58:45 +0000

Following through on the announcement (read: Zopa UK plans Young Market to target young borrower) Zopa has launched this market segment. Zopa says, it will help young adults, aged 20 to 25 obtain a loan, which otherwise would have difficulties - not because they have a bad credit history but because they have little or no credit history.

Zopa lenders can choose to make offers to these young applicants, with the added attraction of being able to charge a higher rate of interest because of the higher risk that these as yet unproven younger borrowers represent. So whereas the safest borrowers coming to Zopa can typically get a 5000 GBP loan over 3 years at around 8.5%, Young Market borrowers will be able to get the same loan at around 12.5%.

Checking on MyC4 late loans

admin — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:57:57 +0000

Lenders at MyC4.com do not have an easy task, when trying to check which of their loans are late on the repayments. The account page does not offer a comprehensive overview page. If a lender really wanted to check in detail he has to click through to the detail page of each loan he invested into.

Officially only one loan has the status ‘defaulted’ so far. However MyC4 so far has no standard policy when a late loan is to be declared defaulted. MyC4 has stated that there will be a default policy by the end of August.

Researching the situation, there are more than 320 loans that are late (fully or partly) with at least one repayment. Of these 72 loans are 3 payments late, 64 loans are 4 payments late, 30 are 5 payments late and 22 are 6 or more payments late.

Another issue that raised some concerns are the first impacts of the changed rules regarding currency risks.

… as some of you might have noticed already the first repayments are now posted on the investors accounts from Kenian investments where we investors are now taking the risk of currency fluctuations.

Within the first period from disbursement to the first repayment the KES has devalued from 97 to 104.5 = 7.2% already. … (Source: see discussion here)

To help lenders selecting loans to invest in, a column with the information whether a loan open for bidding is issued in local currency or in Euro was added to the wiseclerk MyC4 statistic pages.

(Source: uses information from Status der … MyC4 Kredite)

Poland: Monetto has financed 1 million Zloty loans in 4 months

wiseclerk — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 14:56:17 +0000

Monetto.pl, one of the three p2p lending services active in Poland has financed 1450 loans applications resulting in 440 loans totaling 1 million Zloty (approx 0.5 million US$) in 4 months. The average loan amount is 2300 Zloty. The service claims 8000 registered users and a repayment rate of 97% so far (which is said to be a good result).

Borrowers are usually aged 35 to 50, and live in rural areas or small cities. Lenders on the other hand are typically aged 25 to 30 and live in the major cities.

Monetto plans to introduce new features, including guarantees for lenders.

Lucas Banach, CEO of Prender the company that runs Monetto, says that cooperations with e-commerce sites (e.g. Kupujemy.pl) are essential for the growth of Monetto.pl.

Competitor Kokos.pl claims 13000 registered users and 1.2 million Zloty loans on its website. Kokos launched 5 months ago.

(Sources 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)