I have written about the partnership between Google and Lending Club earlier. The image below shows an actual advertising message Google is sending to its Adwords customers. Note that a special loan is offered, not a standard Lending Club loan. This partnership is a great match for both Google and Lending Club. Google can enable its customers to get access to the funds they need to grow their business and potentially spend more on advertising services supplied by Google. Lending Club can target selected businesses, which were prescreened based on the data Google has via the Adwords customer relationship.
Today p2p lending marketplace Lending Club and Google launch a new pilot program in partnership to facilitate low-interest financing to eligible Google partners. The program leverages Lending Club’s ability to provide access to credit in a highly automated, cost-efficient manner, and allows Google to purchase the loans, thus investing its own capital in its partner network to drive business growth. Lending Club will service the loans.
Eligible Google partners will have access to financing with low interest and no fees, enabling them to invest in business development and other growth opportunities, hire additional staff and plan for future expansion.
“This first of its kind program enables Google to invest its own capital in the growth of its partners,” said Renaud Laplanche, founder and CEO of Lending Club. “This is a new delivery model for financial services; this program opens up many possibilities for Lending Club partners to enable credit for consumers and business owners.”
Google for Work has built a network of more than 10,000 partners in recent years, including resellers, consultants, and system integrators, which help Google distribute its applications and services. The company recently launched a new incentive program for partners, boosting the rewards for top performers. The partnership with Lending Club is part of this expanded incentive program.
Currently, the pilot program is available to Google reseller partners in the U.S. who meet certain eligibility criteria. Eligible partners can obtain two-year loans of up to $600,000 to invest in growth initiatives. With an interest-only structure in the first year and a fully amortizing second year, the loan payback schedule is designed to match the cash-flow profile of growth investments.
I did some research on use of Google Adwords in the online marketing strategy of Zopa, Funding Circle and Ratesetter.
Who is most active in search engine advertising?
I was surprised to see that Funding Circle is the most active in advertising on Google Adwords.
The chart shows that Fundingcircle had active ads nearly the whole year, while Zopa ran the ads only for certain intervals and Ratesetter only gave it a small try. Continue reading →
P2p lending site Smava.de for the first time reached more than 1 million Euro (approx. 1.4 million US$) loan volume funded in one month. One factor contributing to this is that Smava is in the top 10 rankings for German Google search results for the keywords kredit (engl. loan) and kredite (engl. loans) since the end of May. I find it interesting that there is not one single bank site in the top ten for these search results.
Watch the following video explaining why a Google.org initiative has commited 10.1 million US$ to fuel the growth of small and medium sized enterprises in developing countries. With a focus on India and East Africa Google aims to:
Lower Transaction Costs
Deepen Capital Markets
Catalyze Capital
While you cannot lend as an individual in this Google initiative, have a look at Kiva, MyC4 or Microplace which have similar aims.
