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Lending Club - Lending Club is a person-to-person lending website that pairs borrowers and lenders through a matching systemLendingClub.com - How It Works http://www.lendingclub.com/info/how-it-works.action . Retrieved (12-28-2007) that combines a search algorithm, credit decisioning and social networkingChu, Kathy. USA Today. (12-25-2007) http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/credit/2007-12-25-peerlending-pers_N.htm. Retrieved (12-28-2007). Lending Club is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. In August 2007 the company raised $10.26 Million in a Series A funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners and Canaan PartnersGonzalez, Nick. [TechCrunch]. (8-22-2007) http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/22/lendingclub-to-close-1026-million-series-a/ Retrieved (12-28-2007).
Zopa is a UK-based company providing an online money exchange, allowing people who have money to lend to offer it to those who wish to borrow, instead of using savings accounts and loan applications at traditional banks. The process is sometimes referred to as peer-to-peer lending. Zopa acts as the man in the middle operating the markets.
Launched in 2005, Zopa was the first P2P lending company. It was set up by a management team that comprised many of those that founded Egg in the UK. The company is based in London and backed by Benchmark Capital and Wellington Partners.
Zopa operates within the United Kingdom, United States, Italy and a service is being developed for Japan. Each geographical area operates a slightly different model.
The name, Zopa, stands for Zone of Possible Agreement, a negotiating term identifying the bounds within which agreement can be reached between two parties. The idea for the service was identified following extensive socio-economic research which itself identified a group of individuals, coined Freeformers. Freeformers were identified as displaying different attitudes towards many aspects of life, including their money
In 2006 the Social Futures Observatory published a study titled Internet Based Social Lending., which seeks to understand the antecedents of Social Lending, drawing parallels with Friendly Societies, and using Zopa as a major source of case study material.
Variously likened to eBay and Betfair in the UK press, Zopa is an addition to the emerging group of peer-to-peer services enabled by the internet. Prosper is a similar service based in the US.
Virgin Money is a UK-based financial services company owned by the Virgin Group and founded by Sir Richard Branson in March 1995. It was originally known as Virgin Direct, and pioneered index tracking by launching a value Personal Equity Plan into the market.
Virgin Money currently offers a number of products, most of which are run in conjunction with other financial service providers. As of 2008 it offers the Virgin Credit Card (issued by MBNA), a prepaid debit card (issued by Clydesdale Bank), loans (Provided by Co-operative Bank and Freedom Finance), mortgages (provided by The One Account), cancer cover (provided by Scottish Widows), insurance - split into cancer insurance, life insurance, car insurance, home insurance, pet insurance and travel insurance (underwritten by UK Insurance and Scottish Widows), savings accounts and ISA's (provided by The Royal Bank of Scotland) and pensions.
Prosper Marketplace, Inc. is a San Francisco, California-based company that operates Prosper.com, an online auction website where individuals can buy loans and request to borrow money. Borrowers set the maximum interest rate they wish to pay, and loan buyers, called "lenders," bid on specific loans by committing a portion of the principal and setting the minimum interest rate they wish to receive on a particular loan. Prosper manages the reverse dutch auction, assembling bids with the lowest interest rates in order to fund the loan.
Prosper verifies selected borrowers' identity and personal data before funding loans and manages loan repayment. These unsecured loans are fully amortized over three years, with no pre-payment penalty. Prosper generates revenue by collecting a one-time fee on funded loans from borrowers, and assessing an annual loan servicing fee to loan buyers. The idea for the service is derived from group banking concepts, such as rotating savings and credit associations. Other motivating ideas derive from the concept of microlending.
Prosper publishes performance statistics on the website; these are available to the public at large. All transactions are in US dollars; lenders and borrowers must be US residents.
Prosper opened to the public on February 5, 2006. Prosper was founded by Chris Larsen, who also founded E-loan, and John Witchel and is backed by Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, Fidelity Ventures, Omidyar Network, DAG Ventures and Meritech Capital Partners.
In April 2008, Prosper aligned with the Utah-charted Web Bank. Previously, Prosper operated under individual lending licenses issued by various states, and was subject to each state's maximum interest rate laws. By affiliating with Web Bank, Prosper borrowers nationwide (except in Texas and South Dakota) can offer a maximum interest rate of 36%, which lenders can then bid down.
On December 1, 2008, Prosper Marketplace Inc. entered into a settlement with state securities regulators over sales of unregistered securities.
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Chollima is a North Korean website providing news and information about economic policies and foreign trade. The website also contains North Korea's first online shop, believed to have opened on December 31, 2007, which has a broad range of product categories including machinery, building materials, automobiles, health foods, music and films. The website is a joint venture between North Korea and an anonymous Chinese company, and is hosted in Shenyang, China."N.Korea Opens Online Shopping Mall", Digital Chosunilbo, January 28, 2008. Retrieved on April 27, 2008.Kelly Olson, "Elusive Web Site Offers N. Korean Goods", WTOPnews.com, February 4, 2008. Retrieved on April 27, 2008.