Talk:Person-to-person lending

Redirect to Peer-to-peer lending
In 2008, the peer-to-peer lending article was merged with and redirected to the present person-to-person lending article (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peer-to-peer_lending&action=history). Now it seems that 'peer-to-peer lending' has established itself as the more widely used term for the concept and 'person-to-person lending' is the only term in the Wikipedia peer-to-peer category (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Peer-to-peer) that does not use the "peer" word. I am therefore proposing to revert the redirect from 2008, make peer-to-peer lending as the main article, and update the content with more recent references and developments. Sigma0 1 (talk) 04:16, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I have not heard any opposition to this suggestion, so I will make peer-to-peer lending as the main article and redirect person-to-person lending article to that one. I updated the content with more recent statistics, P2P lending history in GB and US and rewrote the section about models (that I originally wrote myself but that needed to be made less abstract and more relevant to the current P2P lending practice). Sigma0 1 (talk) 21:09, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Dead link
Reference link no. 2 is "Page not Found" http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Marrying+ideas+with+money/3656050/story.html Need to remove this link from reference or any change of the URL if required — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ps.solanki (talk • contribs) 11:23, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. It looks like the national post website is in the middle of a re-jig.  The article isn't in the Internet archive, so it looks like we just need to wait for them to fix themselves.  I've tagged the link. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 11:55, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Fixed the problems with advertising, neutrality, and lack of references; removed respective editorial tags. The article could be further improved by finding better references to relevant books and scholarly articles. Sigma0 1 (talk) 22:07, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Simple illustration of P2P Lending: [http://www.p2plendingreview.com/whatis.html ] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.221.26.251 (talk) 16:31, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Another way to break-down P2P lenders: Three Types of P2P Lenders:

1. Match Makers for Direct Loans - These firms help previously unacquainted borrowers and lenders connect. Prospective borrowers provide details of their circumstances and the intended use for the funds they are seeking. Often, there is an auction-like process, where lenders bid against one another to loan funds to an individual borrower. Lenders bear the risk of nonpayment. Interest rates depend upon what the bidding market allows on a case-by-case basis. (Prosper, Lending Club & Loanio)

2. Facilitators of Indirect Loans - These firms are middlemen between previously unacquainted borrowers and lenders. The difference from #1 above is that these loans are indirect or pooled, meaning that lenders don't choose and directly lend to individual borrowers. Some of these firms amass a pool of funds from lenders and lend to scores of borrowers, thus spreading out the default risk. Another arrangement in this category has lenders buying an FDIC insured CD (certificate of deposit) from a financial institution, earning interest that's maybe a bit higher than other CD's, and earmarking funds to borrowers of their choosing, without bearing any related risk. (Zopa & GlobeFunder)

3. Friends and Family Go-Betweens - When borrowers and lenders already know one another, these companies formalize loans by creating written documents, reflecting the interest rate and repayment terms the parties have agreed upon. Sometimes these companies will also "service" loans, meaning they collect funds from one party and transfer them to another.(Virgin Money, LoanBack & Nolo)

source: http://p2plendingreview.com

Merge from crowd financing
I think these two articles are sufficiently similar that having one article with redirects makes sense, that could leverage strengths of both articles. I'd love to have your thoughts on this. --Karl.brown (talk) 22:02, 16 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I say go for it. Seems like person-to-person lending is a subset of crowd financing to me (crowd financing can involve models other than debt, but does include debt) Hugh Mason (talk • contribs 01:31, 27 June 2009 (UTC)


 * No thoughts on the merge, but as User:Mathewvwalker seems to have noticed, the term "crowd funding" seems to be far more widely used than "crowd financing" (~65,000 google hits vs. ~3,500, searching both with and without the space). Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 15:10, 28 June 2009 (UTC) Thanks Adrian,to further extend this there are now reputable books written on crowdfunding. Jeff Howe who wrote 'Crowdsourcing- Why the power of the Crowd is driving the future of business' is a great example. I disagree crowdfunding or crowdfinancing should merge with Person-to-person lending. I believe the two are very different topics.


 * Thanks for that Adrian - having created the page with the title Crowd Financing I will now defer to the wisdom of the crowd and rename it Hugh Mason (talk • contribs 00:06, 29 June 2009 (UTC)


 * First of all Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing aren't even close to being the same thing, nor are crowdfunding and P2P finance. Crowdsourcing is a method that uses the crowd to submit human capital based products en mass similar to a contest or competition that is rewarded in the end by someone earning the prize or award for their efforts. www.crowdspring.com is a great example of this. Crowdfunding is a prebuy or fractional ownership platform where the crowd is micro INVESTING...not LENDING to the project. The crowd is purchasing the future rights to a finished product and, depending on the scenario are rewarded in different ways with future earnings by the person or group that they have funded. A good example of crowdfunding at the moment is a group called www.kickstarter.com or www.sellaband.comGeertz (talk) 23:05, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I think Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing are linked as you are sourcing the crowd for capital maybe a better term would be crowd sourced capital. If you are a project owner you would make an open call in this case not for skill but for capital. In the open call can be made for skill, capital and or  ideas. The types of funding sourced from the crowd then fall into different categories such as donations for a registered charity, if not a charity then you are making a gift as a benefactor, or if commercial then you are making either a loan in exchange for interest   or  an investment in exchange for equity  or you could have a hybrid  such as a convertible loan which converts to equity after a period of time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.86.240.41 (talk) 00:27, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are two different models. In his book 'Crowdsourcing- How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the future of business' Jeff Howe writes "crowdsourcing isn't a single strategy. Its an umbrella term for a highly varied group of approaches that share one obvious attribrute in common: they all depend on some contribution from the crowd." I believe www.crowdspring.com www.99designs.com and the like websites are definitions of crowdcreation not crowdsourcing alone. This brings us back to crowdfunding, crowdfunding enables large groups of communities to either donate or invest in large or small projects, without or with return of money. www.threadless.com is great example of a website that adopts the crowdsourcing stratgey and models crowdcreation, crowdvoting & crowdfunding. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mathewvwalker (talk • contribs) 05:43, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Lending is a sub set of financing or funding, excluding charity and several other funding/financing methods. Makes no sense to merge a sub into a main. BenediktG (talk) 08:15, 07 October 2009

Crowd financing now redirects to crowdfunding. Crowdfunding seems mostly a non-profit activity while P2P lending occurs for profit -- I added a remark about this to the P2P lending article and will remove the merge tag. Sigma0 1 (talk) 18:59, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Merge from Peer-to-peer banking
Proposing a merge from Peer-to-peer banking into this article. Banking, of course, could be a larger topic than just 'lending', but the banking article currently revolves around lending, and no evidence that there is any significant 'peer-to-peer' activity in other banking activities (i.e. savings accounts, etc.) Cander0000 (talk) 21:16, 5 August 2009 (UTC)


 * There really hasn't been any discussion on this in over three years, so I am removing the tag. WTF? (talk) 02:55, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Person-to-person lending and Money Laundering
Q. Can Person-to-person lending platforms be abused for money laundering?

'The First'
This article is now full of references to 'X was the first to ...' and then 'Y was the first to ...' I'm thinking we should just eliminate these, otherwise it will just go on and on. Any thoughts from other editors?--Karl.brown (talk) 18:29, 2 March 2012 (UTC)