Online marketplace lender, OnDeck Capital, announced two separate partnership deals simultaneously last week. Expanding its presence to Australia, OnDeck announced that it had partnered with MYOB, an Australian accounting software provider, as well as local technology investors to launch their lending offering to small businesses in the country. Separately, the firm announced at the Lendit conference that they were forming a partnership with fellow online lending operator, Prosper Marketplace.
In the Australian deal, MYOB will be deploying the OnDeck solution to its approximately one million users in Australia as well as provide local expertise. In addition, getting involved are Andrew Bassat and Jason Lenga of Seek International, Gavin Solsky of Healthshare, and Cameron Poolman of Graysonline who are providing investment funds for lending to the new project. Poolman also becomes CEO of the new entity, OnDeck Capital Australia. For OnDeck, the Australian venture becomes their first market beyond North America that they will be targeting with services.
In the U.S. focused deal with Prosper Marketplace, the two firms are aiming to benefit from the synergies of working together. While both companies operate online lending marketplaces, they focus on different customer types. For OnDeck, the firm has focused on small businesses, providing loans and credit of $5000 to $250,000, while Prosper markets services to consumers, with loans and credit of $2000 to $35,000.
By partnering, the two firms will be able to provide their customers with loan types beyond their focus coverage. As a result, consumers using Prosper that also have small business borrowing needs will be able to access funds from OnDeck. Overall, the deal will allow both firms to gain further monetization from existing clients through new lending types being offered. The deal is in contrast with models being used by other P2P and marketplace lenders which have launched services into new verticals using their lending platform technology. For example, Kabbage expanded from business loans to also offering personal loans when they launched Karrot last year. Similarly, SoFi, which had initially focused on P2P student loans, is now entering the mortgage space, while LendingClub is also widening its coverage beyond just businesses.
