A growing market for peer-to-peer loans

Celent research shows online loan origination has increased over 4 major loan categories:

Retail mortgage

Home equity

Credit card

Auto

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Additionally, the USA today reports:
The market for the loans is still relatively small but growing fast, according to Celent, a research firm. Celent projects that $5.8 billion in peer-to-peer loans will be made in the USA by 2010, an 800% [...]

“Peer-to-peer lending” at Wikipedia.org

Peer-to-peer lending is a means by which borrowers and lenders may transact business without the traditional intermediaries, such as banks. It can also be known as Social Lending. The ripple monetary system is a software project based on a similar idea. An enabling technology for peer-to-peer lending has been the internet, where peer-to-peer lending appears [...]