Germany

Bitcoin P2P Lending – a Primer in 8 Steps

Guest

This is a guest post by Radoslav Albrecht who is the Co-founder and CEO of Bitbond – a global Bitcoin peer-to-peer lending platform based in Berlin

When Zopa went live in 2005 it was the first online peer-to-peer lending platform. At the beginning many people thought it wasn’t the best idea to lend money to individuals. The majority felt better by bringing their savings to a bank. Critics didn’t realize that banks were handing out the money to individuals and businesses in quite the same manner – only that through P2P lending this happens at lower operating costs and better customer convenience.

Since early 2009 another new financial innovation came up – the digital currency bitcoin. Entire books have already been written about bitcoin. We will only scratch its surface here. Bitcoin can be looked at from at least two perspectives, the technology perspective and the application perspective. We won’t dive into the technology here. When discussing bitcoin P2P lending, the application of bitcoin as a currency is the relevant perspective.

1. Bitcoin as a currency

As a currency bitcoin offers a number of significant advantages. You can send bitcoins to any location in the world and they will be transacted in a few seconds. It’s very similar to sending an email. Therefore the best analogy between bitcoin and a wire transfer is that between email and a letter. The letter can take up to a couple of days depending on where you’re sending it. The email gets to the receiver instantaneously, and so does bitcoin. Continue reading →

International P2P Lending Services – Loan Volumes November 2014

wiseclerk 1 Comment

November was a month of mixed results for the listed p2p lending services. Some grew, some had a small decline in newly originated loan volume this month. Ratesetter crossed a total volume of 400 million GBP originated since inception. Ablrate profited from the deal with the first institutional investor, which boosted volume. I added one more service.  I do monitor development of p2p lending figures for many markets. Since I already have most of the data on file I can publish statistics on the monthly loan originations for selected p2p lending services.


Table: P2P Lending Volumes in November 2014. Source: own research
Note that volumes have been converted from local currency to Euro for the sake of comparison. Some figures are estimates/approximations.

Notice to p2p lending services not listed:
If you want to be included in this chart in future, please email the following figures on the first working day of a month: total loan volume originated since inception, loan volume originated in previous month, number of loans originated in previous month, average nominal interest rate of loans originated in previous month.

Lendico Makes First Spanish Loans Available on German Marketplace

wiseclerk

Today p2p lending service Lendico made the first loans from Spanish borrowers available to German investors on the German marketplace. German lenders can now bid on these loans provided they fulfill a few prerequisites. To prepare for this, Lendico had in the past weeks informed interested investors of the necessary steps to enable bidding on these cross-border loans on the German marketplace:

  • Lenders need to upgrade to a (free) premium account, if they don’t already have one.
  • Lenders need to send a form via postal mail to the tax authorities that certifies the status of residency. Lendico advices that it will usually take the tax authorities 5-21 days to process this confirmation.
  • The returned postal form can then be submitted via post, fax or email (scan) to Lendico.

The origin of the listed loans is now marked by a flag symbol on the German marketplace (see below).


Excerpt of a screenshot of Lendico.de showing listed German and Spanish p2p loans

This does not work (yet?) for loans from the other Lendico markets.

International P2P Lending Services – Loan Volumes October 2014

wiseclerk

October was overall a good month for p2p lending services. Especially Zopa did grow and closed a bit of the gap to the 2 other UK p2p marketplaces . Prosper reached a total volume of 2 billion US$ originated since inception. I added one more service.  I do monitor development of p2p lending figures for many markets. Since I already have most of the data on file I can publish statistics on the monthly loan originations for selected p2p lending services.


Table: P2P Lending Volumes in October 2014. Source: own research
Note that volumes have been converted from local currency to Euro for the sake of comparison. Some figures are estimates/approximations.

Notice to p2p lending services not listed:
If you want to be included in this chart in future, please email the following figures on the first working day of a month: total loan volume originated since inception, loan volume originated in previous month, number of loans originated in previous month, average nominal interest rate of loans originated in previous month.

New Figures on Lendico and Zencap

wiseclerk

Lendico and Zencap are German p2p lending services. They are separate companies, but both are founded/backed by Rocket Internet.

Lendico

Lendico is a p2p lending service with consumers as borrowers and has been rolled out in 6 national markets so far. See my previous articles on Lendico for more details. Lendico management did not give any official figures on loan origination amounts in the past. That’s the reason that Lendico is not included in my monthly loan volume stats tables. But in the context of the Rocket Internet IPO some figures and estimates became available.
An estimate says that Lendico Germany originated 1 million EUR loan volume in the first 6 months of 2014. The following are hard (official) figures:

  • Lendico loan volume stats for month ending Jan, 31st 2014: 2,343 loan applications received, 23 loans issued, 112K EUR loan volume originated
  • Lendico loan volume stats for month ending June, 30st 2014: 5,675 loan applications received, 65 loans issued, 376K EUR loan volume originated
  • Lendico number of unique visitors in month ending Jan, 31st 2014: 46K
  • Lendico number of unique visitors in month ending Jun, 30st 2014: 143K
  • Lendico net loss in 2013 was 3.2 million EUR. Note that Lendico launched in Dec. 2013
  • Rocket Internet states Lendico valuation to be 120 million EUR in July 2014

Based on non-representative lender postings on the Lendico forum at P2P-Kredite.com it seems that no Lendico (Germany) loans have defaulted yet and only very few have gone temporarily overdue. Continue reading →

International P2P Lending Services – Loan Volumes September 2014

wiseclerk

September was a very good month for most p2p lending services. The major UK p2p lending services grew strongly with Ratesetter surpassing 30 million GBP originated. I added the new UK service Ablrate which originated the first two loans.  I do monitor development of p2p lending figures for many markets. Since I already have most of the data on file I can publish statistics on the monthly loan originations for selected p2p lending services.


Table: P2P Lending Volumes in September 2014. Source: own research
Note that volumes have been converted from local currency to Euro for the sake of comparison. Some figures are estimates/approximations.

Notice to p2p lending services not listed:
If you want to be included in this chart in future, please email the following figures on the first working day of a month: total loan volume originated since inception, loan volume originated in previous month, number of loans originated in previous month, average nominal interest rate of loans originated in previous month.