Popular peer to peer lending websites
The peer to peer lending concept helps the borrower to benefit from timely loans to the tune of $25,000 or below from peer to peer lending sites that are based on the social networking concept online. These companies offer attractive loans ranging from one to three years to even five year, at low interest of 6 to 8 percent. Borrowers are able to pay off their credit card debt and other forms of unsecured debt through this form of financing.
The lender also benefit from peer to peer lending sites because he can get anywhere between 7 percent to 30 percent return, much higher than a modest 3 percent return if he had put his money on a savings or CD account. Peer to peer loan sites bypass banks and other financial institutions and help borrowers come into direct contact with the lenders, eliminating the time and money spent in between.
Let us go through some of the best peer to peer lending sites
1. Prosper- Prosper.com is one of the largest peer to peer lending sites. It is eligible to permanent residents of US only. They claim to have funded a whopping 249,000,000USD in personal loans with a massive strength of 1,110,000 members. The loan requests are often between $2000-25,000. The borrower rates of interest can vary from just 6.57 percent to 31. 5 percent.
2. Lending Club: Lendingclub.com has increased loan offers from $25,000 to$35,000. It has issued $332,530,400 in loans to date. The interest paid to investors is $27,810,274. 63.77 percent of borrowers have reported using the money lent to pay their credit debt or consolidate debt. Lending Club is also available to US citizens and permanent residents only.
3. Kiva: Kiva.org gives loans worth $1,602,575 every week with the repayment rate being 98. 22 percent. As a non-profit organization, it lends money from $25 to $25,000 since its inception in 2005. There are 615,557 lenders registered with the site and $234 million have been given in loans. The site works with 60 countries.
4. Zopa: Zopa is an acronym for Zone of Possible Agreement. Launched in 2005, this UK based company was the first peer to peer lending institution that facilitated the loan process. The company was launched in London with financial help from Benchmark Capital and Wellington Partners. It operated within the UK, Italy and Japan.
5. Niche based funding sites: If you are looking for funding for a creative project, like for instance, a movie, a music album, a theater performance, a gig etc, you can go to sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, which are proactive about lending money for these kinds of projects. The people are looking for funding interesting creative projects. The charges are also modest, IndieGoGO charges 4-9 percent fee with an additional 3 percent third party fee. For Kickstarter, the project has to be funded in totality before the time expires. If the funding is not done in full, the borrower is not lent money. There is a 5 percent fee applicable if the funds are raised effectively.
