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Venture Funding Flows to Wesabe and Prosper; Wesabe Launches on Facebook

By Jim Bruene Posted on June 20, 2007
Categories: Facebook, Prosper, Wesabe

Two potentially disruptive startups, Prosper, the leader in U.S. P2P lending and Wesabe, the first-mover in social personal finance, both announced new funding rounds today:

Prosper took in $20 million, bringing total funding to $40 million (previous coverage here)
Wesabe added $4 million to its bank account, bringing its funding to $4.7 million (previous coverage here)

These are sizable bets on on niche markets that haven't thrown out a lot of revenues so far. But whether they succeed or not, the money will certainly fund additional innovations that will be educational for those in the banking industry.

Case in point: Wesabe launched an app on the Facebook platform, becoming the first personal finance company to do so (screenshot below). So far it's a simple front door to their group discussions, but with more development resources, it could become a full-fledged "bank" running within the Facebook community.

For more information on Wesabe refer to our latest Online Banking Report, Social Personal Finance (here).

New Person-to-Person Lender, Lending Club, Hopes Facebook Linkage Allows it to Prosper

By Jim Bruene Posted on May 25, 2007
Categories: Facebook, Lending Club, Loans & Credit, P2P Lending, Prosper

Just as we are putting the finishing touches on our latest Online Banking Report, which looks at the intersection of personal finance and social networks, a new person-to-person lender launches. And how do they plan to gain traction? Through tight integration with Facebook, the second-largest social network. So we are holding the presses, and adding this important new development to our upcoming report.

We'll have much more on it later, but if you are curious now, login to Facebook and check out Lending Club (the easiest way is to login via the link at the top of the Lending Club homepage). Or read Colin Henderson's great analysis here.

Last year, Facebook developers created a proof-of-concept personal finance app, originally called Facebank, then changed to MoochSpot (see previous coverage here). That effort was designed to show how third parties could leverage the Facebook API to create new services. It didn't take long for someone to take the bait. Within a few weeks, BillMonk created an interface to Facebook to support their expensing tracking service, now owned by Obopay. Buxfer also supports login via Facebook's username/password (post here), but does not link into the social network as yet.

But Lending Club is the first to leverage the Facebook interface to support actual financial transactions, in this case lending/borrowing. The company is modeled after Prosper. Lending Club timed its launch to coincide with the Facebook developer's meeting and launch of Facebook Platform.

We'll be testing it during the next few days and will report back on whether its a challenge to mainstream lending, or merely blog fodder. Given the rising power of social networks, my guess is the former.

LendingClub homepage from outside Facebook

LendingClub homepage from inside Facebook

Facebook Launches MoochSpot, a “Social Loan” Tracker

By Jim Bruene Posted on September 8, 2006
Categories: Bank 2.0, BillMonk, Epayments, Facebook, Personal Financial Management

In mid-August, Facebook, the popular social networking site aimed at college students, alums, and now a few select corporations has released a simple personal finance application. The original name was FaceBank (see screenshot at bottom of article), but recently it was renamed MoochSpot (click on screenshot below for closeup).

MoochSpot allows Facebook users to loan (i.e., spot), borrow (mooch), and settle debts with other Facebook users. At this point there is no payment capabilities, so the money must change hands through other methods.

Here's how it works:

Create a "piggy bank" to track the funds
Select a Facebook friend from the list that automatically shows in the MoochSpot list (note, in our screenshot below, we don't have any predesignated friends, so the list is empty)
Enter the amount of the loan
(Optional) Enter a reason for the loan

Analysis
MoochSpot was developed, not because of huge user demand to track personal debts, but to showcase the type of application that can be built by outside developers using the recently released Facebook APIs. MoochSpot is highlighted on the Facebook developer's page <developers.facebook.com>.

BillMonk, the self-proclaimed "social money" site which allows debts to be split and tracked via website or mobile phone (see NB Apr 30), is the first financial services provider to jump on the bandwagon and create Facebook integration (in inset, see Facebook login in lower-right of BillMonk's homepage). We tried on several computers to get it to work and were unable to get past the Facebook login. We'll check back in a few days to see if they have the bugs worked out.

Financial institutions looking to create online banking sites that click with college students should pay close attention to BillMonk and MoochSpot. It would be relatively simple for a bank to use the Facebook API to develop even more powerful payment applications that combine the loan-tracking benefits of MoochSpot with actual epayment capabilities to move money back and forth among friends. While it wouldn't do anything that Paypal doesn't do today, the integration within online banking is important.

But the biggest reason to integrate with Facebook, MySpace, or any other 20-something social network is because it positions yourself as a bank or CU that understands the younger generation. And make sure you have genuine 20-somethings designing the marketing and writing the blog copy.

Appendix:

Below is the original FaceBank application prior to changing the name to MoochSpot: