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Prosper.com

By Glenn Andrew on May 15, 2008 in Business Development, Web 2.0 Tool

Prosper.com is an online community for the lending and borrowing of money. It truely has become the online marketplace for people-to-people lending. By bidding on borrower’s loans, lenders get greater returns by offering great rates.

Prosper, America’s first people-to-people lending marketplace, was created to make consumer lending more financially and socially rewarding for everyone. The way Prosper works is intuitive to people who have used eBay. Instead of listing and bidding on items, people list and bid on loans using Prosper’s online auction platform.

Borrowers create a listing and set the interest rate they’re willing to pay
Lenders place bids with as little as $50 toward the loan
Prosper combines the bids with the lowest rates into one simple loan
The loan amount is deposited directly into your bank account.

You can get loans for small businesses, student loan, home loans, vacation loans, and so on. In many cases, the lenders have a specialization, say business, and they are more apt to take on a small business loan than a bank would, because they understand the nature of business. Multitudes of communitities are being built with such diversity that there is a group very everyone. This is one more example of the power of social networks.

Check it out at Prosper.com and let me know what you think!

Glenn Andrew

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