Canadian Micro-Financing...

Well, looks like Canadians waiting for an equivalent service to Zopa or Prosper will have to keep waiting.

CommunityLend

CommunityLend looks like it is still in development. Their website has changed a little bit. They still have the Google News and Google Blog feeds, but not very much other information. You can take a look at CommunityLend's webpage history at archive.org. It is somewhat surprising that you have to click on a small "about" icon at the bottom of the screen to get any real information. One would think that they could put the really important stuff (like projected launch dates and beta tests) in a big bold heading on their front page. I would imagine people are more interested in that kind of information than old newspaper articles.

They do state that they will do a dry-run preview of the site over the next few months. I really like when companies do these public beta tests, and it allows the public to really have a say in the end-product, so that it gets designed to their wants and desires. As well, it saves the company valuable time by having their customers do their work for them, something that Passport Canada has learned to do very well. They also state that they intend to have everything up and running by "fall of 2007" with real money.

I really wish they had a blog about where they are in the development process. Drupal is not very hard to set up :). Build some suspense here people! A message board would be nice too. I know that Zopa runs a rather well-updated informative blog. I'll probably send them an email over the weekend to see if they can let me know what's up. I really don't see too much of a need to be too secretive, since it doesn't look like the big guys, Zopa and Prosper, have any real plans to expand to Canada (that I could've found). Zopa is looking to launch into the US, and I'd like to how it turns out with the subprime lending issues (which could probably be a boon for the person-to-person lending industry).

Peermint

Peermint Update: Looks like their website is now back to looking like it should be. Perhaps there were some DNS issues, or something, I'm not sure, but it looks like they are back on track. It is good to hear.

Peermint left a nice message on one of my posts announcing their goal of entering the p2p lending market. However, it looks like their website has a "grantaudit.com" banner, and they look like they're aimed at helping R&D companies get government grants (which I hear is rather profitable as well if you're good at it). I'll try to send them another email as well, perhaps they just changed names or lost their domain.

The Future

Soon I'll be making a post about some features I'd like to see in a future consumer loan website, because I sure do come up with a ton of ideas (hopefully many of them are good, and might even be implemented). Also, many of the suggestions would probably be relevant to new Canadian entrants, and other established companies in the online lending/finance industry as well.

Another post will talk about the true "social" lending service providers, where you actually loan to your friend or people you know in a facilitated manner (presumably with debt collectors as well). Another idea that I like, which should have less regulation and significantly less fraud.