Prosper Marketplace to Acquire Leading Personal Finance Company BillGuard
BillGuard’s Mobile App Will Drive Engagement for Prosper Community;
Provides Solutions to Monitor and Protect Money, Make Smarter Financial
Decisions
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Prosper Marketplace, which operates a leading online marketplace that
connects borrowers and investors, today announced that it has signed a
definitive agreement to acquire BillGuard, a personal finance analytics
company that develops popular consumer apps to manage, protect and do
more with money and credit. The acquisition will enable Prosper
Marketplace to offer borrowers and investors a full suite of powerful
tools to help them make smarter financial decisions, and will give
Prosper Marketplace access to Israel’s extraordinary engineering and
product talent pool.
“This will be a transformative acquisition for Prosper Marketplace and
for the marketplace lending industry. Until now, nobody has brought
together marketplace lending and personal finance management to deliver
an offering that truly empowers, protects and educates consumers,” said
Aaron Vermut, chief executive officer at Prosper Marketplace. “In
addition to the strategic value of this acquisition, we’re also excited
to welcome the BillGuard team to Prosper Marketplace. They represent
truly world-class talent and bring a team and technology platform that
will immediately accelerate our product development.”
BillGuard’s app helps consumers track their spending across all
accounts, budget effectively, protect their money from wrongful charges
and monitor their credit score. BillGuard’s technology, powered by
crowdsourcing, also helps consumers detect the billions in fraudulent
payment card charges that strike Americans each year. Since inception,
BillGuard has flagged over $70 million in unauthorized charges. With
more than 1.3 million registered users, BillGuard’s five-star rated
iPhone and Android mobile apps have won almost every industry award in
their category, including being named one of the top banking innovations
of all time by Online Banking Report and a Best App of 2014 by Google.
“Both BillGuard and Prosper Marketplace are focused on empowering
consumers to be financially secure, smart and successful,” said Yaron
Samid, co-founder and CEO of BillGuard. “Joining forces means that
BillGuard can continue to innovate while contributing to the evolution
of Prosper Marketplace as a full-service financial management company.”
“The BillGuard app helps people stay on top of their financial life and
make better decisions about how they spend and save their money. We’re
thrilled to be able to offer this product to all Prosper’s customers,”
said Itzik Cohen, Chief Business Officer at Prosper Marketplace. “In
addition, Israel is home to phenomenal tech talent on par with the best
of Silicon Valley, and we see great opportunity to bolster our ranks by
broadening BillGuard’s proven team in Tel Aviv.”
As one of the industry’s largest marketplace lending companies, Prosper
Marketplace has connected hundreds of thousands of qualified borrowers
with loans for everything from medical procedures like fertility
treatment to home improvements and debt consolidation. The company has
experienced extraordinary growth over the past three years, originating
$1.6 billion in loans through the Prosper platform in 2014 – a 350%
increase from 2013 – and it expects to more than double that in 20151.
To date, nearly $5 billion in loans have been transacted through the
Prosper platform. Prosper Marketplace was recently named to Inc.
Magazine’s 2015 Inc. 5002, a list of the fastest growing
private companies in America. The company was also named one of
America’s “Most Promising Companies of 2015” by Forbes Magazine3
and is on Finovate’s Fintech Unicorn List4.
Financial Technology Partners LP and FTP Securities LLC (together “FT
Partners”) acted as exclusive strategic and financial advisors to
BillGuard and its Board of Directors in this transaction.
About Prosper Marketplace
Prosper Marketplace, headquartered in San Francisco, operates a leading
online marketplace for consumer credit. The Prosper platform connects
people who want to borrow money with people who want to invest money.
With a commitment to providing world-class customer service, the
convenience of applying online day or night, and none of the lengthy
applications or wait times associated with traditional avenues, the
Prosper platform offers people a superior way to borrow money at fair
rates. Over $4 billion in personal loans have originated through the
Prosper platform, helping people around the U.S. consolidate credit card
debt and pay for everything from medical procedures to home improvement
to special occasions. Learn more about borrowing and investing through
the Prosper platform at www.prosper.com.
The Prosper lending platform is owned by Prosper Funding LLC, which is a
subsidiary of Prosper Marketplace. Follow Prosper on Twitter
@ProsperLoans.
About BillGuard
BillGuard’s mission is to empower consumers to control, protect and do
more with their money. BillGuard’s proprietary transaction monitoring
technology pioneered the use of crowdsourcing and big data analytics to
help consumers detect the $8 billion in wrongful payment card charges
missed by banks each year. Downloaded over a million and a half times
since release, BillGuard’s 5-star rated mobile apps have won almost
every industry award in their category, including being named one of the
top banking innovations of all time by Online Banking Report. The
company was founded in 2010 and has offices in New York City and Tel
Aviv. BillGuard is backed by some of the world’s top venture investors,
including Bessemer Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Peter Thiel’s
Founders Fund, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, IA Ventures and SV
Angel. For more information, visit https://www.billguard.com.
1 “Prosper Reaches New Milestones — $4 Billion in Loans
Following Another Record Quarter” Prosper Blog, July 9 2015 http://blog.prosper.com/2015/07/09/prosper-marketplace-reaches-new-milestones-4-billion-in-loans-following-another-record-quarter/
2
“10 San Francisco Companies That Are Growing Like Crazy” Inc. Magazine,
August 12 2015 http://www.inc.com/bartie-scott/2015-inc5000-top-10-fastest-growing-companies-in-san-francisco.html
3
#61 Prosper Marketplace: http://www.forbes.com/companies/prosper-marketplace/
4
“FinTech Unicorn List: 36 Companies” Finovate, May 8 2015 http://finovate.com/fintech-unicorn-list-36-companies-34-more-closing-in/#
Contacts
Prosper Marketplace
Sarah Cain, 415-378-0775
scain@prosper.com
or
BillGuard
Mick
Weinstein, 347-797-6196
VP Marketing
mick@billguard.com
