지퍼 해외 뉴스 지퍼 가즈아 ㅏㅏㅏㅏ~~

The very basic of the finance industry can be summarized as a traditional bank taking in deposits from its community and lending it to those who need it. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) finance was born to revive this tradition by linking online communities of borrowers and savers, promising much more convenient, fast and transparent transactions.

The premise of P2P lending is simple. They are online marketplaces where people lend money to other people. Now these online marketplaces have the technology to underpin the deal. P2P companies will run credit checks on borrowers, match them with just the right lenders and keep track of their payments. Since they operate online, they can run with lower overhead and therefore provide the service cheaper  than the traditional banks can.

In 2005, the world’s first P2P finance company, Zopa Ltd. was founded in the UK with a promise of revolutionizing the financing industry by stripping it down to basics — connecting people who needed money with people who had it to invest. Since the first P2P enterprise, over the past decade P2P financing has spread throughout the western world and finally became a global phenomenon.

The P2P industry has been growing rapidly since it appeals to not only individuals and businesses, but also to a vast number of those that are deemed “unbanked.” According to Research and Markets who provides market research and data services, the world’s P2P finance market will grow by 53.06% annually from 2016 and 2020. In the meantime, one Morgan Stanley annual report predicts that by 2020 the global P2P market will become a 490 billion-dollar business.

As such, the concept of P2P finance has been around, but recent technological development – especially blockchain – makes this form of borrowing and lending money much more widespread by further lowering the costs and increasing access and efficiency.