Social–Network Peer to Peer Lending?

I’m not sure that that’s the most accurate way to describe Prosper—although the home page’s title says “people to people lending” so I guess I’m not too far off. What an intriguing idea ...

Here’s the text of the current company overview, from their “about us” page:

Prosper, America's first people-to-people lending marketplace, was created to make consumer lending more financially and socially rewarding for everyone.

The way Prosper works is intuitive to people who have used an online auction. Instead of listing and bidding on items, people list and bid on loans using Prosper's online auction platform.

People who want to lend set the minimum interest rate they are willing to earn and bid in increments of $50 to $25,000 on loan listings they select. People who lend can easily diversify using "standing orders", which automatically make many small loans to different borrowers.

Borrowers create loan listings for up to $25,000 and set the maximum rate they are willing to pay a lender. Then the auction begins as people who lend bid down the interest rate. Once the auction ends, Prosper takes the bids with the lowest rates and combines them into one simple loan. Prosper handles all on-going loan administration tasks including loan repayment and collections on behalf of the matched borrower and lenders.

Prosper's rigid privacy policy reflects co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Chris Larsen's longstanding history as an advocate of stringent consumer financial privacy protection laws and practices. Prosper does not sell, rent, or share members' personal information with third party marketers. Prosper members are in control of how much personal information—if any—is revealed on the website and with other members. Prosper's security and identity verification systems are state of the art, and consistent with those used by banks, brokerages and institutional creditors.

Prosper generates revenue by collecting a one-time 1% or 2% fee on funded loans from borrowers, and assessing a 0.5% or 1% per annum loan servicing fee to lenders. Backed by Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Fidelity Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, and Omidyar Network, Prosper has raised $40 million. Prosper's marketplace platform is patent pending.

I haven’t poked around on the site much, but the little I did doesn’t tell me much about the backers’ roles in this endeavor. And of course, the privacy issues are of interest too. Still, it is intriguing to me ... if only because Prosper took a simple idea—people informally lending each other money—and internetted it without overly corporatizing it (apparently). I wonder how much snitching to the fedgov goes on here ... do lenders have 1099s filed on their profits, for starters?

As someone who is recently and completely debt free (huzzah!!!), I’m not in the market for a loan ... but if I were, I might consider this route. Even more tantalizing is the idea of making some money by becoming a lender—not that I have the werewithal to do so right now. If it is a way to route around banks, with all their demands for numbers and papers and other stuff that they turn over to the feds as a routine matter, then I am all for it.

Would you consider using something like Prosper, either as a lender or borrower?