New year debut planned for Peermint

Peermint, an aspiring provider in the social lending or peer to peer segment, plans to soft launch in January and February in Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Scott, Ryan and Shelley Rigby are behind Peermint. Scott is based in Brisbane, his twin brother Ryan is in Vancouver whilst their sister Shelley is managing the New Zealand end of the project.

Scott is currently working with Wotif.com.au and has a background in online reservations and payments systems, Ryan works with Boeing and has a background in biometric security systems. Shelley has a sales background with Telstra NZ and BMW.

"Compliance is a big thing for us, our advice is that we should make sure we fully comply with everything before we go live" said Scott Rigby yesterday. "We are now working through the legals of getting an AFSL and talking with APRA who say they are interested in this market and are monitoring the situation.

"Now it's about educating the public. This is disruptive technology, like email, Skype, MSN, even the typewriter, people had to be educated and then they realised what the benefits were.

"At the end of the day the winners in this market will be who can automate the backend process the most so costs are low."

Rigby thinks there are other financial products which could be delivered through the P2P model.

"There is a multitude of financial services that could be adapted to P2P - currency trading is one, insurance could be another."

Meanwhile Igrin, which appears to be the first supplier of peer to peer loans in Australasia said it has now brokered and settled its first loan.