Review of peer to peer lending developments in 2007
Thursday, December 27th, 20072007 was an exciting and eventful year in the development of peer to peer lending. Looking back these were the highlights:
- February: Boober.nl launches the first p2p lending service in the Netherlands.
Prosper.com raises required borrower credit score to 520 and introduces other major changes - March: Smava.de launches German p2p lending service
- April: Fairrates.dk offers person to person lending in Denmark
- May: Lendingclub.com launch in the US, initially limited to Facebook members
- June: Prosper raises another 20M US$ VC. PPdai p2p lending launch in China
- July: Globefunder raises 1.5M US$ VC
- August: Boober is temporarily forced to stop lending by financial authorities. MyC4, which allows lenders to fund microloans to African entrepreneurs, grows steadily while still in private beta
- September: Kiva sold out after extensive media coverage.
- October: Microplace launches with microlending. Microplace is an Ebay company. Australia gets peer to peer lending through iGrin. Zopa UK launches 'Zopa Listings'. Prosper portfolio plans introduced. A Prosper SEC filing is the first step towards a secondary market for Prosper loans
- November: Boober and Zopa launch in Italy. Prosper reaches 100 million US$ loan volume.
- December: Zopa US launch. Lendingclub goes nationwide. Canadian Communitylend receives 2.5M VC. In Sweden Loanland is the first p2p lending service.
I will write another article on which trends to expect in p2p lending in 2008.