Newly Launched ZimpleMoney: P2P Lending Zimplified

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer making financial transactions face-to-face.

Others may be more forward thinking because P2P lending sites keep launching. The newest, ZimpleMoney, was launched last Monday.

Although I am not fully sold on online tools, I would seriously consider using this one.

For one, the site is inviting. The attractive purple-green-and-white layout and pleasing design made me want to look around. More importantly, as a P2P newcomer, the site is highly navigable. In fact, useful and impossible to miss “How it Works” information is available as a tab option on every page.

I liked the fact that I was able to click on the calculator to demo a loan payment without even signing in. I decided to try a sample friends/family loan and entered the loan amount, interest rate, and loan term. ZimpleMoney told me how much I had to pay monthly and provided a scheduled breakdown of each monthly payment for the entire loan term.

ZimpleMoney partnered with Wells Fargo to facilitate loan transfers through ACH technology. The transfer takes about five business days to be completed.

Virgin Money offers a similar application, but I found Virgin’s site to be more confusing than ZimpleMoney. The function tabs on the Virgin site were smaller, for example, and not as visible. The “How it Works” tab – the most important in my opinion, was placed last behind all the various loan options. I pretty much stopped my visit right there.

ZimpleMoney stuck to the age-old adage: “Keep it simple.” I think that’s why it’s going to win the hearts of average consumers such as myself who are considering making loans online.

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I should note that ZimpleMoney’s launch comes at an interesting time because of the controversy surrounding P2P lending right now.

Last month the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a cease-and-desist order against Prosper, one of the largest P2P lending sites. The SEC claims the company was selling unregistered securities. The SEC will now more closely regulate sites similar to Prosper in order to stop future violations.

ZimpleMoney creator Steve Rabago says there are differences in the processes of his site and Prosper and he doesn’t feel that ZimpleMoney is subject to the same violations.

"ZimpleMoney borrowers and lenders know one another," says Rabago. "ZimpleMoney puts a pre-negotiated agreement into a financial services software application for billing and collection purposes and lastly, ZimpleMoney does not hold lender cash or send the borrower loan proceeds."