---
title: "P2P Lender Zopa Gets $13M Funding – Expands into US"
date: 2007-03-20
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2007"
    url: "/tag/2007.md"
---

# P2P Lender Zopa Gets $13M Funding – Expands into US

![](https://web.archive.org/web/20110830181447im_/http://rww.readwriteweb.netdna-cdn.com/images/zopa_logo.gif)One of the more innovative web apps around has just gotten [another big injection of funds](https://web.archive.org/web/20110830181447/http://www.americanventuremagazine.com/news.php?newsid=2608), and a new CEO to boot. [Zopa](https://web.archive.org/web/20110830181447/http://www.zopa.com/) describes itself as a “marketplace for Social Lending”, where people lend and borrow money with each other – sidestepping the middleman, i.e. banks. They recently [advertised for jobs](https://web.archive.org/web/20110830181447/http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2007/03/09/jobsluverly-jobsget-your-jobs-here/) in their new America operation (in San Francisco) and [celebrated their second birthday](https://web.archive.org/web/20110830181447/http://blog.zopa.com/archives/2007/03/07/now-we-are-two/).

Zopa’s new CEO is the former CEO of San Francisco-based Chela Education Financing, Douglas H. Dolton. He is understandably bullish on Zopa’s prospects:

> “Zopa is the most innovative concept I’ve seen in my 13 years of being involved in loan businesses \[…\] I expect it to be the fastest-growing company I’ve ever led, because of its outstanding consumer proposition: amazing rates on financial products, and a strong, safe person-to-person connection that promises to change the way U.S. consumers think about money.”

Well he would say that…. but there’s something about Zopa as a web company that is very attractive. It is very web-native, definitely innovative, and it routes around institutions that have enjoyed too much power over ordinary people for too long – banks! Phillip Riese, Chairman of Zopa, says about the US expansion:

> “Our UK peer-to-peer business is now well-established and growing rapidly and we are poised to launch in the US, an even larger opportunity for the company.”

R/WW normally doesn’t cover VC news, but the fact that Zopa is heading into the US market with an innovative financial web app – is something that caught our interest. It already has over 135,000 members in the UK (whose average age is 37 apparently), so it looks poised to make a splash in the US.

Thanks Emre for the pointer. Any of our UK readers used Zopa? If so, we’d love to hear your opinions of the service.

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/p2p_lender_zopa_funding.php))*