The Best of P2P Lending Community Content

P2P Lending News — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 19:42:45 +0000

What is it about social lending that inspires people to write music and create videos promoting their favorite services? Okay, sometimes it’s just cold, hard cash, as in Lending Club’s $3,000 or Zopa UK’s £500 prizes for the top video posted on YouTube, or it’s a trip around the world, as with Zopa Italy’s launch-focused Zopacontest. But other times, it’s just creative folks with a little extra time on their hands who want to promote their favorite site.

In Kiva’s July newsletter, they promoted a video called “If I Had $25“, a play on the Barenaked Ladies hit “If I Had $1,000,000“, created by johnbr2, a musician from Decorah, Iowa:

The song is both Kiva-accurate (buying yaks and looms), well-sung, and hilarious. An interlude that discusses the “cultural imperialism” of Kraft dinner is particularly funny.

Among the highest-quality user-generated content, Zopa Italy takes the cake with entries from their Zopacontest, held in November 2007 to promote the upcoming launch of their site. Many entries are professional and captivating, but the winning entry went to Silvia Casali for her beautiful animation:

Lending Club’s video contest back in 2007 to promote the fledgling Facebook-based site yielded a bunch of entries, and the first place, $3,000 winner was the well-produced “Teddies” video, featuring a small-businessman-with-medical-bills storyline. Among the lot of excellent videos was one without fancy production value, but lovable in its honesty, titled “The Worst Entry For The Lending Club Video Contest“:

Back in 2007 a song entitled “Prosper Panhandler song” was posted by an artist called Underwater Bass Player. The bluesy ballad focuses heavily on Prosper’s now defunct user forums, and in the song, the author agonizes over which Prosper group to pick before eventually settling on one called “Everyday People“:

What other good social media have you seen related to P2P lending? Share it in the comments.

Kiva Launches Lending to U.S. Borrowers

P2P Lending News — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:25:58 +0000

Microlending darling Kiva has announced today that they will start allowing lenders to fund loans to Americans. Although Kiva has facilitated over $75 million in loans to entrepreneurs (Kiva calls them “the working poor”) in developing nations since 2005, this is the first time that American residents have been able to take advantage of the Kiva platform from the borrowing side. Kiva cites the current credit crisis in the U.S., which prevents entrepreneurs from raising the cash they need to keep their businesses going, as a primary motivator.

Because Kiva works exclusively with microfinance institutions (MFIs), they are not accepting loan applications from credit-starved Americans via their web site, in the same way that Lending Club or Pertuity Direct might. Rather, Kiva has partnered with Accion USA and Opportunity Fund to provide American borrowers looking for small business loans, and has raised the maximum loan amount available for Americans from the worldwide max of $3,000 to $10,000.

During this pilot phase of U.S. lending, 18 borrowers from New York and 18 borrowers from San Francisco are vying for loans on the Kiva site. You can see all of the loans here. At the moment, only 29 of the 36 loans are left, and all but one loan have some level of funding.

Some of the loan requests include video, such as this one from Luis, a baked goods deliveryman in New York:

As with loans made to entrepreneurs in other countries, Kiva doesn’t pay lenders interest on their loans, although never before have the actual interest rates from the MFI’s been so easily discovered: according to Accion USA’s small business loans page, interest rates range from 8-15%, and The Opportunity Fund’s small business page shows rates starting at 8%.

So where is the interest going? Presumably to the MFI for servicing the loan (both also take fairly high origination fees in the 3% range), and hopefully to Kiva for bringing the capital and promoting the MFI’s services. If Kiva maintains their status as a PR juggernaut (to date there are 138 articles in Google News), I imagine that the attention will flood Accion USA and Opportunity Fund with inquiries.

What I haven’t seen in any of the press so far is any mention of Microplace, eBay’s interest-yielding microfinance play. Which is interesting because Microplace already offers microlending to American entrepreneurs through MFIs like ACCION Texas, Habitat for Humanity, and yes, ACCION USA. And the ACCION USA investment via the Calvert Foundation is currently yielding 2.0% interest.

P2P Lending News » Kiva

The Best of P2P Lending Community Content

Kiva Launches Lending to U.S. Borrowers