Today marks the launch of Canada’s First Peer-to-Peer Lending website Communitylend. Currently available only in Ontario I am very excited to see where the Toronto-Based Startup is going to do to the finanical landscape of Canada, where sources say, has a 100-billion unsecured consumer loan market with annual interest payments of close to 15-billion. Although originally founded in 2006 they delayed launch with good reason due to regulatory concerns. Of course security is without a doubt the biggest worry end users may have when monetary transactions are involved online, not to mention a bad rep that online transactions have had in the past (nigerian prince scam anyone?). CommunityLend is doing its best with this peer-to-peer lending system, which is already gathering fans in other countries, by making it as painfree as possible. In a nutshell both lenders and borrowers have to be “verified” and borrowers can go through a “bidding” process to find the best rate for your loan. Once you get past the huge legal disclaimer and instructions (with good reason of course and I would make it mandatory if you are interested) you will find that Communitylend is in fact a great step in the right direction to make things simpler & more importantly transparent. I only hope to see them take off and spread across Canada.

What are your opinions on CommunityLend?

 sources: kelowna.com, communitylend.com

-wilks (@wilkinc)