Corrected: Zopa Italy Relaunch Delayed
Correction: The initial post stating that the Bank of Italy reneged on their agreement with Zopa was inaccurate. Thanks to the Zopa Italy team for clarifying things. A corrected post is shown below.
In an update on their blog today, Italian P2P lender Zopa Italia has announced that the site will not relaunch until October or later. Zopa has been working on the establishment of sub-accounts for lenders as part of an agreement with the Bank of Italy, and is pushing the relaunch date out now that they have more details on the technical integration issues involved.
In today’s announcement, Zopa named banking partner IMEL.EU (European Institute of Electronic Money), specialists in electronic funds transfers, who will hold a separate account for each lender before loans are disbursed to borrowers. The regulatory and technical integration of the parties has turned out to be much more involved than what Zopa initially expected, and the relaunch date is uncertain. Zopa has promised to provide an update by mid-October at the latest.
Zopa Italy borrowers and lenders are understandably upset, wondering whether the cost of the Bank of Italy’s request will require new fees or tariffs. The most biting criticism comes from Mario, still angry at the Bank of Italy’s initial intervention, who wonders how Italian regulators can focus on the straw in Zopa’s eye while the beam of the credit crisis is lodged in their own.
Zopa Italy’s main social lending competitor, Boober Italia, has also suspended new user registrations and has posted a message on their web site stating that they are investigating actions by the Bank of Italy. Boober claims these actions “have nothing to do with P2P lending at Boober.it”, but that is a dubious claim given Boober’s aggressive actions to curtail site activity.
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