Lending Club Business Loans are Here

As mentioned in a thread on DailyFunder, I have personally seen evidence that Lending Club is already doing business loans. The loan was issued this month in the amount of $35,000 and disbursed to a business, not an individual.

I have been very outspoken about my belief that peer-to-peer lenders will compete directly against merchant cash advance companies and their short term lending counterparts. I am now absolutely positive that will be the case as the first merchant I saw to receive a Lending Club business loan was a former user of merchant cash advances.

One has to ask themselves if Lending Club will be targeting UCCs, particularly those of their new closest competitors in the space, OnDeck Capital and NewLogic. I was not able to determine the terms of the Lending Club loan but it is still my expectation that it will be a 3-5 year deal with automated monthly payments. Compare that against the industry’s dominant short term lenders that do 1 year deals with automated daily payments.

You can argue that there will be very little overlap in the merchants these companies target but I have seen overlap right out of the gate.

I expect we’ll all see a lot more of this.

Sean Murray is the President and Chief Editor of deBanked and the founder of the Broker Fair Conference. Connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on twitter. You can view all future deBanked events here.