P2P Lending: the next killer web-application?

The new kid on the block, which must have a number of banks wondering, is money lending sites--- otherwise known as peer-to-peer lending. These sites put people who want to borrow money in touch with people who have money to lend. These sites score the borrowers using the traditional credit scoring techniques and this is used to indicate the risk to the lenders who might lend money.

In the end the borrower gets the money they want a loan at a good rate and the borrower gets a good rate of return: often much better than a bank.

A site to watch in the UK, that was founded by ex-Egg employees, is Zopa. Which is now two years old.

Others around the world are:

• Prosper Launched in Febuary 2006
• Lending Club which has an association with facebook. Opened May 2007.
• Duck9 appeared late 2005.
• CommunityLend
• Boober (in the Netherlands)
• Ireloans in Ireland
• Kiva seems like more charity orientated.
• Smava in Germany