Posts Tagged ‘facebook’

Update on Lendingclub launch

Friday, May 25th, 2007

Following up on my earlier post regarding the LendingClub launch read Colin Henderson's view on this. Furthermore in this blog it says (without giving sources):

For the moment, the site is only accessible through Facebook, but will eventually be available to the public.

 

Lendingclub to introduce p2p lending to Facebook members

Friday, May 25th, 2007

Today, Lendingclub.com launched offering a p2p lending service to Facebook members. Members can request loans between $1000 and $25000. Other facebook members can the lend the money to the borrower. While technically not arranging loans between freinds like CircleLending, Lendingclub makes uses of the social network and the trust that users have into it. Lendingclub combines aspects from other p2p lending sites like Prosper.com and Zopa.com.

Comparing it to Prosper:

  • Lendingclub requires higher credit score as threshold for borrowers to apply (640 compared to Prosper's 520)
  • Lendingclub suggests an interest rate based on the borrowers credit grade rather than letting the borrower set an interest rate.
  • There are groups like at Prosper

Lendingclub uses what it calls "LendingMatch" to automatically match parties on shared connection it finds. Lenders can additionally manually select and search loans.

Lendingclub

The founders of Lendingclub, one of them has a background at Mastercard, raised $2 million in angel funding (source: VentureBeat). 

Using an existing social network gives Lendingclub a great marketing advantage over competitor Prosper.com, which had to build its memberbase starting from zero.