Blockchain technology has been extolled as a game-changer for many industries. It is the backbone for most cryptocurrencies that transforms the whole world economy. The blog describes the impact of blockchain technology on Peer to Peer Lending platforms.

What is Peer to Peer Lending?

Peer to Peer lending is a method that connects lenders with borrowers directly. In P2P lending, no middleman or traditional bank is involved.

A prospective borrower can lend money from a lender without any role of the financial institute. It offers an advantageous platform for the individual borrowers or small business to take a loan from the borrowers in terms of low-interest rate or absence of strict banking system rules. Loan applications are rejected by banks due to poor credit history. Thus, it is a popular way of financing projects, business ideas, and personal loans from individual investors. Lenders or savers can invest their money and can earn higher returns and interests. In the past, it was primarily known as social lending.

Since 2005, the demand for peer to peer lending has quickly increased, after first being launched in the UK. It took the total amount of loans from £1.5m to £3.5bn in 2016. And that was only in the UK. In fact, UK is very popular around the world for peer-to-peer lending with over 40 platforms. By 2020, P2P lending will become prevalent in businesses to connect with investors via peer-to-peer websites and market-wide platforms. The profile of borrower is put out on peer to peer websites where lenders can choose by assessing their profiles and decide whether they would like to risk lending money to a borrower.

What is P2P Crypto Lending?

P2P Crypto Lending follows the same method of conventional peer to peer lending which cuts out banks or middlemen. However here the lending is done for the cryptocurrencies. Currently, the two most popular crypto coins are bitcoin and ethereum which are used to fund P2P loans. As the cryptocurrencies are verging on the mainstream now, this P2P crypto lending has the potential to grow quickly all over the world which does not involve any banks or financial institutes.

Impact of Blockchain technology on Peer to Peer Lending

Blockchain can truly transform Peer to Peer lending by offering transparency, efficiency and can push it even further. Blockchain smart contracts are beneficial to Peer to Peer lending service providers or companies. It allows them to validate transactions, ensure the counterparties are legitimate and perform routine account administration tasks almost quickly.

Loan tokenization is the other area where blockchain implementation is useful. The foundation of the traditional lending system is debt form’s trading. However, P2P loans do not include this. Implementing blockchain would enable the tokenization of loan assets, let investors easily trade their loans with other P2P network members. For example, a borrower creates a token and issues a smart contract that defines the repayment of a loan. Here, the monthly payments of interest will be done automatically. The investors will get their interest.

Blockchain is a decentralized ledger which offers a great benefit to P2P Lending. Traditional P2P lending involves the expenses of keeping up with complex transaction histories and interactions between users. But applications built on blockchain can do this automatically. It records every single transaction which has been performed. These records are unalterable and become permanent once stored. Thus, it eliminates complex data recording structure and reduces expenses for the lenders.

Last, combining blockchain with P2P lending puts a great impact on financial services and bring efficiency and transparency into its operations.