How to Start a Peer Lending Business | 10 Steps You Don’t Know

If you want to know how to start a peer lending business, in this article, we give you the easiest way to do it below. To create a peer-to-peer lending platform, you must follow the following steps:

How to Start a Peer Lending Business

Select the company registration

Selecting the correct record for your business involves considering the following:

• In the event of bankruptcy or force majeure, the company’s registration as a public limited company or limited liability company will be the one that will protect against those creditors that may exist.
• Public limited companies require more tax reports and accounting matters compared to limited liability companies. Additionally, a corporation must hold regular shareholders’ meetings.
• As a corporation or LLC, the Limited Liability Company has the alternative of deciding to pay taxes while the different registration structures imply different tax statuses.
• According to the share of ownership of each participant, the company must distribute the profits and losses. In the LLC, the terms will be established by those who participate in the company since the distribution is based on the operating agreement.

Register the company

Commonly you must register the trademark in the state where the business will operate. When they are P2P lending platforms, it refers to the headquarters. This means that at this stage, you should consider the following moments:

• The name must be available.
• It is not necessary for the domain name to match the brand name.
• According to the state, the regulations may vary.
• It is intended that by the name of the business, people understand the complexity of the activities and the form of registration.

Domain of the platform

When we talk about the domain, we mean the address of your website, which should be short and easy to read. You can also use them for abbreviated brand names abbreviations if that is your preference. In this part of the process, you should consider the following:

• Both the name of the company and the domain must be unique.
• The domain registration requires money, but they are small amounts up to $ 20. According to the domain zone, there may be exceptions of $ 100 or more.
• The domain is not included in the property, but it is rented when it is registered.

Make a team

Making the team is an aspect of vital importance for any project, so you must execute it seriously. Here are some suggestions at this point:

• Constitute the team with specialists in websites, financial institutions, financial law, advertising, marketing, and finance.
• It must have personnel with banking knowledge who can open a credit business and make credit risk assessments.
• The hiring of personnel who can provide long-term loan contracts and social packages with accumulative bonuses on the spot.

If you have contact with people with these characteristics who work in other successful companies, hire them. Your skills and experience will be beneficial to the business.

Arrange Initial capital

To be solvent to provide credit and make other expenses, you must seek initial capital. Avoid sitting around waiting for P2P investors to arrive at your site.

There are different ways in which you can get the initial money:

• Creating tokens that provide dividend benefits or lower commissions. That is, it is a kind of primary supply of coins.
• Some make good investments in a business where they are granted participation, that is, informal investors. If you design your business plan in detail, you will attract these investors.
• There are three very important aspects on which the initial capital will depend: the marketing strategy, the cost of developing the platform, and the size of the team.

You can request a bank loan to cover these aspects since creating a P2P loan platform ranges from 10-200 thousand dollars. However, you will require the same amount for the marketing promotion.

P2P loan platform

The platform can be created by outsourcing development or simply by hiring blockchain programmers. But a better option would be to use products that you can customize. For example, in the implementation of white labels, we must take into account the following:

• Refers to inappropriate sample solutions on unique credit products.
• If white label specialists are hired, incorporate your credit scenarios.
• Use open-source white-label since they provide more confidence on the part of users, and the products have fewer errors.

To develop the P2P platform from scratch, you will use approximately 4 to 12 months. However, by using “white label,” you will reduce this time to three and the cost.

Create Website

There are three stages to which we must pay attention when we are going to create a personal loans portal between individuals:

• The website must contain the largest number of payment gateways.
• The site interface is required to be intuitive and support different core languages.
• The basic design of the website is added in some white labels. Use it only as a draft.

Test the site and the platform

To verify the correct operation of everything, it is necessary to test each scenario of the use of the customized platform, focusing on:

• The performance, if we use the PageSpeed ​​Insights service, we will be able to verify the loading speed of the site on different devices. However, you can use other tools to improve performance.
• The security of the connection with the client and the payment gateways can be guaranteed by encrypting them.
• Usability refers to the understanding that the user must have registered, invested money, or requested a loan from the initial transaction to the site.

Launch the platform

Before launching the platform, a marketing campaign is necessary. This campaign can include discounts to investors and borrowers, more exact requirements for granting loans, lower interest classes, and other similar actions.

However, do not forget that there are scammers who want to get a loan and vanish. There are many of them initially since it is possible to find gaps in the risk assessment, perhaps in the user recognition algorithm. Hackers, who are in the ability to seek to hack a website, launch electronic fraud resources, or an attack ordered by the competition.

Activate the technical assistance service

It is almost certain to include errors and bugs when launching the platform, regardless of whether you have taken precautions, such as testing and debugging. 

• For this reason, a support service should be activated quickly, which in the initial months works with maximum load. This will give you success in:
• Find and eliminate almost all errors and bugs.
• Understand what was omitted in the development phase and quickly add the characteristics, instructions, and missing elements.
• Receive the users’ point of view and understand what needs to be improved to make the platform easier and more accessible.
• Now you can be a successful P2P lender by creating a peer-to-peer lending platform by following the instructions provided in this article.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you make money with peer loans?

Yes, you can earn money with peer loans, but they are risky investments.

Is peer loan a good deal?

This service is of great interest to value investors since they provide better returns than traditional lenders.

What is the peer loan business?

Many private investors make loans to a company, commonly using an online platform for business loans or even student loans.

How do you get a P2P license?

Making a request and the presentation of the corresponding documents according to what is license requires you.

How much money do you need for peer loans?

People need typically $ 70,000 a year or more in income.

Are P2P loans risk-free?

This risk is not falling on private investors when the borrower fails to repay a given loan. If the platform does not offer a buyback guarantee alternative, the loan term person loses their investment.

How can I invest $ 5,000 and make money?

• In fractional shares with Robinhood.
• Exceeding the rate of your savings account with BlockFi.
• Opening a Roth IRA account
• Letting robots make the investments for you with improvements.
• Use a savings account and invest in your children’s college.
• Diversifying by investing in ETFs

How much can I borrow among peers?

You can borrow a minimum of $ 1,000 and a maximum of $ 50,000 according to your credit, income, and other information. The bank takes into account this info in your loan application. Origination fees fluctuate from 0% to 8%. As for late fees, they are 5% of your late monthly balance.

Bottom Line

People turn to peer-to-peer financing solutions after a rejection by banks. This should alert you to the fact that all of your clients are potentially dangerous. Increase the interest rate to compensate for the increased risk, and screen thoroughly for your customers. 

Other hazards include your servers, which hackers are looking for important information about the industry. You should engage an expert. Finally, you should have an official legal representation that you may contact at any time of day or night.