About a year and a half ago I wrote about Zopa, a P2P banking service in the UK, and therefore a potentially disruptive innovation in the financial services sector. The International Herald Tribune has meanwhile discovered it as well:
A Web site based in Britain, Zopa.com, and another in the United States, Prosper.com, have started businesses that connect individuals eager to borrow money to other people willing to lend, offering both sides better interest rates than banks.
Banking analysts suggest that these hyper-efficient operations, with few employees and no costly real estate, could force changes to established banks.