Bankrate.com – Mark Schwanhausser, a financial services analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, says their study shows that credit card debt is the main reason people want to engage in P2P lending. “We’re forecasting that P2P lending specifically for credit card balances will grow from $38 billion in 2007 to $159 billion by 2012.”

Douglas Dolton, CEO at Zopa, says they expect to also see growth in student loans. “The most popular loans are home improvement and debt consolidation—the elimination of credit card debt. But education loans, I think, will be very large this summer as the rest of the student loan business sort of falls on itself. Car loans in the U.K. are very popular and we’ve seen a fair number of them in the U.S.”

Growth of P2P
It’s been little more than a year and a half since I last wrote about P2P. See the previous article, “Person-to-person lending: High return, but risky?” for a look at how P2P generally works.

Back then, Prosper, which considers itself an eBay-style marketplace, was the only option for U.S. consumers. CircleLending, now called Virgin Money US, existed, but it was set up to manage loans between family and friends. Zopa, a U.K. outfit, hadn’t yet launched its stateside operation.

Today, Zopa is available in the U.S.; Fynanz is available as a student loan marketplace, and Loanio says it’s coming soon. In Canada, Community Lending is available in beta launch, and IOU Central is partially shut down due to regulatory matters. But, as mentioned, the big three in America are Prosper, Zopa and Lending Club, the latter of which is not accepting new lender registrations or allowing current lenders to loan additional money. Lending Club’s Web site says it’s because the firm is registering with securities authorities to offer promissory notes. Read Full Article