2007 was an exciting and eventful year in the development of peer to peer lending. Looking back these were the highlights:
- February: Boober.nl launches the first p2p lending service in the Netherlands.
Prosper.com raises required borrower credit score to 520 and introduces other major changes - March: Smava.de launches German p2p lending service
- April: Fairrates.dk offers person to person lending in Denmark
- May: Lendingclub.com launch in the US, initially limited to Facebook members
- June: Prosper raises another 20M US$ VC. PPdai p2p lending launch in China
- July: Globefunder raises 1.5M US$ VC
- August: Boober is temporarily forced to stop lending by financial authorities. MyC4, which allows lenders to fund microloans to African entrepreneurs, grows steadily while still in private beta
- September: Kiva sold out after extensive media coverage.
- October: Microplace launches with microlending. Microplace is an Ebay company. Australia gets peer to peer lending through iGrin. Zopa UK launches 'Zopa Listings'. Prosper portfolio plans introduced. A Prosper SEC filing is the first step towards a secondary market for Prosper loans
- November: Boober and Zopa launch in Italy. Prosper reaches 100 million US$ loan volume.
- December: Zopa US launch. Lendingclub goes nationwide. Canadian Communitylend receives 2.5M VC. In Sweden Loanland is the first p2p lending service.
I will write another article on which trends to expect in p2p lending in 2008.