A former developer and part-owner of leading Hungarian social networking site iWiW has launched a person-to-person lending website, reports Internet trends blog Webisztán.
The site, called Noba, aims to help people looking to lend or borrow money find each other.
Péter Petrovics and other developers have been working on the service since August, and are expecting to emulate the success enjoyed by person-to-person lending sites active in other countries, such as Zopa in the UK – which tend to offer more favorable terms for borrowers than banks.
The launch takes place as many Hungarian banks have discontinued severely limited the allocation of new consumer loans in foreign currencies, and as domestic interest rates have recently spiked over 10%.
Yes, but these services are still taxable (valued in kind for the cost of the services was they would be in cash), so I’d expect APEH to get interested if this was ever to take off seriously.
I don’t think it will take off, at least not under the current terms: 0% interest, and “scout’s honor” as collateral.
kiva.org works w/ 0%