Prosper logoOn Friday the SEC approved P2P lending company Prosper‘s sixth amendment to its offering of $500 million in person-to-person loans. The S-1 is effective as of Friday, July 10 at 3:30 PM, and the final Prospectus is dated July 13, 2009. It has taken Prosper almost exactly nine months to get their S-1 approved, which is surprising given that Lending Club got the first P2P lending prospectus approved in only six.

Prosper took their site offline Sunday, with a maintenance message that the site would be down all day Sunday and Monday. This may spoil Lending Club CEO Renaud Laplanche’s Bastille Day on Tuesday.

Prosper Maintenance Message 7/13/2009

The Prosper site probably won’t change much when it re-launches, except that Lenders will only be able to participate from certain states, and borrower credit requirements will be much stiffer. Lenders who can participate will have the ability to sell their promissory notes a the secondary market, operated by Folio Investing.

Expect the Prosper PR machine to come out guns blazing — if there’s one thing Prosper does well, it’s get ink from major publications. They probably had to hold back on PR after the pseudo-relaunch in March because only lenders from California were allowed to participate. But now with a nationwide launch, and an up and coming competitor in Lending Club, the press will likely pounce.

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