Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Prosper.com - A website that matches lenders with borrowers

A new website called prosper.com promises to match borrowers with lenders who are willing to lend to them. Prosper.com has already brokered over $30 million dollars in loans through it websites, and they only went live in February.

If your worried about getting your money back after lending it to a person you have never met or don't know from a hole in the wall, Chris Larsen, the founder and ceo, states that they have certain measures in place to prevent false identities and let lenders choose the safest borrower. The site rates borrowers by their credit score and debt-to-income ratio and claims to properly screen each for an authentic identity and credit record.

While this seems like a great idea, I myself would be hesitant about lending my money to anyone I didn't know and would surely want to start very small to test the site and the borrowers. It's a novel idea but one that I believe will take more features and protection from prosper.com to make it mainstream. For starters, the ability to trade a loan, better lender protection, and even better id theft would be a great start.

No comments: