Bank ING Diba acquires p2p lending marketplace Lendico. According to Finanz-Szene.de the transaction was reported to the German Federal Cartel Authority last week. The bank has confirmed the acquisition.

Lendico went through hard times. It had to cut back on international activities, never really took off on German home turf and realigned from consumer lending to SME lending. Last year the majority stake was sold from Rocket Internet to Arrowgrass.

Speculation is that the bank acquired Lendico in a make or buy decision to save development time for an own platform, which could have taken over a year. While the price of the acquisition was not disclosed, I suspect Lendico could have come cheap, considering the lingering of the business in the past years.