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Post by CircLender on Feb 5, 2016 4:05:03 GMT
Hi everyone, I am Marco Yap, Founder of CircLender.com. For the last few months, we have been very busy in building a social lending platform to help people facilitate, formalise and manage friends & family loans online. The platform is now ready for thorough testing and scrutiny. We are searching for honest, sharp and knowledgeable beta testers to tell us what we are doing wrong and, hopefully, what we are doing right. We want to build something that real people will love to use as much as we are enjoying in building it, as simple as that! When you join our beta testing program, you’ll receive USD 50.00 CircLender credits as a token of our appreciation for your participation. We look forward to your participation and are grateful for your help. Join the beta testing program now at www.circlender.com/ Thanks, Marco Yap
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Post by lynnanthony on Feb 5, 2016 5:15:19 GMT
1. Is Circlender purely for US residents, or do you intend operating internationally?
2. Under "Contact Us", I can see no details of your physical address, nor any indication of who is behind this site. It may be a personal thing but I always like to know who and where I'm dealing with.
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Post by CircLender on Feb 5, 2016 5:28:05 GMT
Hi lynnanthony,
Thank you for your interest in CircLender services!
The services will be made available to 60 countries. The complete listing of these countries can be found at the registration page.
We are now in our beta testing stage and will proceed to business/company incorporation after this.
We are based in Singapore.
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p2pmaster
investment is life.
Posts: 128 
Likes: 54
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Post by p2pmaster on Feb 5, 2016 11:44:47 GMT
So, you are making a basic marketplace for FF to make it more efficient to borrow? Lenders are from internal circle?
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Post by easteregg on Feb 5, 2016 12:23:34 GMT
What credit checking is performed, or are you relying on reputation to ensure borrowers repay?
Lenders in the UK may remember Quakle and YES-secure which used a similar business model.
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Post by CircLender on Feb 5, 2016 12:38:09 GMT
So, you are making a basic marketplace for FF to make it more efficient to borrow? Lenders are from internal circle? Yes. CircLender is a social lending platform that manage personal loans between friends & family members. In our case, loans are provided by the borrower's circle of friends and family members. CircLender is NOT a lender. We only provide the platform to facilitate, formalise and track repayment of friends & family loans.
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Post by CircLender on Feb 5, 2016 12:46:17 GMT
What credit checking is performed, or are you relying on reputation to ensure borrowers repay.
Lenders in the UK may remember Quakle and YES-secure which used a similar business model. No. We don’t do any credit checks. Since loans are provided by the borrower's circle of friends and family members, the creditworthiness of a borrower is determined by the lender who knows the borrower well. Unlike, Quakle and YES-secure, the platform's primary function is to help users facilitate borrowing(thru crowdsourcing), formalise the loan and track repayment of loans made within their circle of friends and family members. Our fee structure is also different, we charge a nominal fee of USD5 for borrower per successfully transaction regardless of the loan amount and the lender pays nothing for using our services. No cost, no hidden fee, no % charges involved.
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Post by batchoy on Feb 5, 2016 13:40:13 GMT
As I understand you are not a lending platform you are just charging fees to provide a loan tracking service that someone could easily do with an excel spreadsheet or a small note book purchased from the 99p shop.
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ben
Posts: 2,020
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Post by ben on Feb 5, 2016 13:51:13 GMT
As I understand you are not a lending platform you are just charging fees to provide a loan tracking service that someone could easily do with an excel spreadsheet or a small note book purchased from the 99p shop. It does seem a bit pointless to me the site think the question that is missing from the FAQ section is why aslo what use would 50 USD credit be to anyone beta testing
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Post by CircLender on Feb 5, 2016 14:06:17 GMT
As I understand you are not a lending platform you are just charging fees to provide a loan tracking service that someone could easily do with an excel spreadsheet or a small note book purchased from the 99p shop. Hi Batchoy, We certainly offer more than what an excel spreadsheet can do. Here is how the site works: - Borrowing through CircLender makes it less awkward and more professional for borrower to approach potential lenders in their social circle. It is as simple as creating a loan request and inviting your friends and family members to respond to your request.
- When your lender committed to lend you a loan, CircLender helps both parties formalise the loan in writing to ensure that you and your lender don't come across any misunderstandings later on.
- To make sure the repayment stays on track, CircLender provides the tools for you and your lenders to calculate payments, track repayments, record collections and manage friendly remind
Our platform helps users crowd source funding via email and social media, we also handle all the loan calculations, prepare promissory note, enable tracking of repayment/collection as well as manage reminders for overdue. If you have the time, I suggest you join the hundreds of others in the BETA testing program and let me know what you think after you went thru the entire loan facilitation process. If you have any doubts, please let us know.
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Post by batchoy on Feb 5, 2016 15:44:37 GMT
As I understand you are not a lending platform you are just charging fees to provide a loan tracking service that someone could easily do with an excel spreadsheet or a small note book purchased from the 99p shop. Hi Batchoy, We certainly offer more than what an excel spreadsheet can do. Here is how the site works: - Borrowing through CircLender makes it less awkward and more professional for borrower to approach potential lenders in their social circle. It is as simple as creating a loan request and inviting your friends and family members to respond to your request.
- When your lender committed to lend you a loan, CircLender helps both parties formalise the loan in writing to ensure that you and your lender don't come across any misunderstandings later on.
- To make sure the repayment stays on track, CircLender provides the tools for you and your lenders to calculate payments, track repayments, record collections and manage friendly remind
Our platform helps users crowd source funding via email and social media, we also handle all the loan calculations, prepare promissory note, enable tracking of repayment/collection as well as manage reminders for overdue. If you have the time, I suggest you join the hundreds of others in the BETA testing program and let me know what you think after you went thru the entire loan facilitation process. If you have any doubts, please let us know.
All of which can be done without paying CircLender for the privilege, and whilst you may provide people with document templates and loan calculation tools (all of which I can get for FREE simply by asking Google) you do not handle any of the funds (other than the fees you charge) and you do not appear involved in anyway to ensure that the loan is made in the first instance or that any of the repayments are made. Additionally your terms deny any and all liability for your services, so any there is no comeback for lenders should your loan agreements fail to stand up to scrutiny in a court of law. As a result calling yourselves lenders or a lending platform is grossly misleading to the extent that you a probably breaching trade descriptions legislation.
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pikestaff
Member of DD Central
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Likes: 1,484
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Post by pikestaff on Feb 5, 2016 16:26:30 GMT
I think that's harsh. I understand what they are trying to do. It does not appeal to me, but if it did I would be quite happy to pay $5 to somebody for a packaged solution. My reservations would be more around:
- trust / sharing of personal information (it could be a scam)
- how can they make money at just $5 a pop
- regulation (or lack of)
- whether the documentation will be right for every jurisdiction.
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Post by CircLender on Feb 5, 2016 23:45:02 GMT
batchoy,
Please get your facts right. CircLender is NOT a lender. We merely provide the platform to facilitate, formalise and track repayment of friends & family loans. If you think that USD 5 is not worth for the services we offer, I suggest you ignore the website for the time being and revisit us again later. You may have different views/opinions when you are not arguing for the sake of arguing.
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Post by CircLender on Feb 6, 2016 0:03:44 GMT
I think that's harsh. I understand what they are trying to do. It does not appeal to me, but if it did I would be quite happy to pay $5 to somebody for a packaged solution. My reservations would be more around: - trust / sharing of personal information (it could be a scam) - how can they make money at just $5 a pop - regulation (or lack of) - whether the documentation will be right for every jurisdiction.
Thanks for your feedback. FYI, personal information of borrowers will not be shared publicly and only their friends and family members can have access to their loan requests. Our platform does not openly publicize loan progresses or information. When the borrower sent a loan request to the intended recipients, these recipients will have to sign in to view the loan request. Since the loan request is shared out thru the borrower' emails and social media accounts, both lender & borrower can easily determine the identity of each others. As a result, reduce or eliminate the potential exposure to scam. We will put in more measures in this area to ensure that transactions will only be facilitated in a safe and genuine manner. Can we survive with only USD 5 per pop? haha I also don't know. I am now gathering feedback from people in various countries that if they are willing to pay the 5 bucks for our services. In general, responses are quite encouraging. Jurisdiction... we are trying to cover 60 countries. We have cleared the major one and will continue to work on this area.
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Post by batchoy on Feb 6, 2016 17:23:29 GMT
batchoy,
Please get your facts right. CircLender is NOT a lender. We merely provide the platform to facilitate, formalise and track repayment of friends & family loans. If you think that USD 5 is not worth for the services we offer, I suggest you ignore the website for the time being and revisit us again later. You may have different views/opinions when you are not arguing for the sake of arguing. I have got my facts right having read your small print, but you seem to want to mislead people through title of this thread, the name of your business and a lot of your website text blurb. I can foresee that a lot of people will end up parting with funds thinking you are a lending platform. Even in your responses on this thread you make statements like 'borrowing through Cirlender' which is wholly misleading when no funds pass through Circlender, all Circlender provides is a set of tools to for the borrowers and lenders to manage the loan, and legal documents that may not stand up in a court of law when the crunch comes. Personally I would spend the £75, as I have done in the past, and get a proper loan agreement that is applicable to England and Wales, comes with relevant legal advice and has been drawn up a fully indemnified solicitor.
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