Prosper Adds Personal Finance Analytics With Acquisition

Prosper Marketplace, which connects investors and borrowers, said Thursday (Sept. 24) that it is buying personal finance analytics company BillGuard, which makes apps to track credit, money and the consequences of financial decisions.

The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but in a statement the companies said that the deal lets Prosper access Israel’s engineering talent (BillGuard is based there). Under BillGuard’s applications, 1.3 million users and consumers track spending across accounts, track budgets and can monitor credit scores. The technology is tied to crowdsourcing and has additional features through which users can detect fraud. In the release the companies said that BillGuard has helped detect more than $70 million in unauthorized charges since being founded in 2010.

[bctt tweet=”The companies said that the deal lets Prosper access Israel’s engineering talent.”]

BillGuard, which had been traditionally free, said in June that it was introducing paid features that would be able to conduct email surveillance, offer text alerts and even help automatically cancel sensitive financial items and data in the event that cards or wallets were lost or stolen. Prosper, for its part, has been expanding its access and offerings with a push into small banking, striking deals with 160 community banks nationwide.

“Both BillGuard and Prosper Marketplace are focused on empowering consumers to be financially secure, smart and successful,” Yaron Samid, cofounder and CEO of BillGuard, said in a statement accompanying the release. “Joining forces means that BillGuard can continue to innovate while contributing to the evolution of Prosper Marketplace as a full-service financial management company.”

Prosper helped originate more than $1.6 billion in loans through its platform in 2014, up 350 percent from the previous year, and expects a doubling of that tally this year. The total amount of loans, cumulatively, has been more than $5 billion. Key features include credit card debt consolidation and even academic loans.

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