2017 was a tough year for some of the biggest names in alternative financial services in the U.S. – Prosper, OnDeck and LendingClub, in particular. Among investors – both those who buy loans on the platforms themselves and those who buy stock in the platforms on...
A decade ago, the world of financial services saw what was perhaps its greatest sea change in a generation — in 2007, two separate, unconnected and epoch-making things happened at the same time. The first was that the iPhone hit the market, igniting the mobile phase...
“We started this company to address one very specific problem: the 70 percent of Americans living paycheck to paycheck. That’s the secret shame of our country, and we don’t really want to talk about it because we, culturally, don’t like to talk about money; and...
GoFundMe, the online donation platform, announced Thursday (Nov. 30) it is introducing a zero percent platform fee with new, U.S.-based personal fundraising campaigns. In a press release, GoFundMe said the move will make it possible for more people to get help as quickly as possible....
Last week, we told you a tale of two Fed studies, which were putatively about the same topic, but drew nearly opposite conclusions. The first study, released last summer as a joint effort by the Chicago and Philadelphia Feds, examined a large data set from Lending Club. Using that data as a proxy...
Online consumer lending – in a variety of forms – has grown explosively over the last decade. In 2010, digital lenders originated $249 million in unsecured personal loans, and by 2016 that number had grown ninety-fold. But as online lending has become an increasingly important part of the financial services landscape,...
Those who are fortunate enough to have access to credit often take it for granted. Imagine if your car broke down, your child needed school supplies or your father passed away and you couldn’t afford the funeral, but banks didn’t want to work with you...
No one likes getting a check. No one. And we have the data to prove it. When ranked against all other possible methods of getting payments, the recently launched PYMNTS Disbursement Satisfaction Index™ ranks checks dead last, with a satisfaction score of 4.4 out of 100 possible points by the more...
How much of the U.S. population is financially vulnerable? That is, how many are walking the razor’s edge of solvency, and how many are on their second chance after a shock to their financial stability — such as job loss, work-related injury or a divorce...