Much like William Azaroff, I have been looking longingly South of the border at all of the new peer-to-peer lending services that Canadians can't utilize. Well, I can now personally test the Canadian P2P waters with a new service that launched in Canada this week—IOU Central.
I immediately setup an account, linked it to my credit union account and I am in the lending business. The setup process was dead easy, while still offering a number of security layers including e-mail verification and bank account verification.
It felt a little odd to offer up my social security number and my bank account number to a brand new entity that I only learned about hours ago. This will be the hardest thing for most people to get over.
I have only looked at the lending side of things so far. There are about a dozen people looking for loans—everything from debt consolidation to new appliances to funding a short film. The interface is clean and simple and you can easily finance a portion of someone's loan. I am looking forward to experimenting.
It's too bad that this didn't launch with a credit union affiliation like ZOPA did in the US. If it did have a credit union affiliation, I would feel more like I just setup "Tim's Credit Union" rather than the "Bank of Tim."
I was amazed at how fast I was able to setup my account and the fact that I did not need to leave my chair to do so. Credit union leaders need to take note and take action while the bankers stick to denial.
Tim