The Dutch site Frooble.nl, which was announced to start as competition for Boober.nl, was in public beta mode for only a few days before it was closed to the public by the founders who cited technical problems and said they hope to launch again in September after solving these.
In his blog, John Witchel, CTO of Prosper.com, describes the current situation regarding the sale of defaulted loans. This offers an insight look at the problems and the future plannings. Check the comments, too.
As Netbanker reports, Prosper.com is advertising on Bankrate.com. Article speculates if this customer acquisition strategy will yield a positive ROI.
Virgin USA has bought CircleLending.com. Unlike Prosper.com CircleLending handels p2p lending between people that knew each other before the transaction, e.g. friends or relatives. Its purpose is to help structuring and managing private loans. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Franz Hetzenauer, founder of tulip computers, bought 17.5 percent of dutch p2p banking platform Boober.nl. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Boober aims to branch into other European countries this year.
Following up on my previous post there now is a statement by Andrew, an employee of Prosper stating:
Our long-term goal, however, is to get a federal lending license. It will solve a lot of problems for us (state rate caps, primarily), but is simply harder to get. Nonetheless, it is something that we are pursuing aggressively. As with just about everything else we do, unfortunately, I cannot give you a specific date. Please understand that it is a huge priority for our business, and we are ushering the process as quickly as we can (unfortunately, it's more a process of waiting on regulators than us actually doing things proactively).