P2P lending company Prosper Marketplace raises $70 million in funding

Prosper.com, a peer-to-peer lending marketplace in the U.S., has raised $70 million led by Francisco Partners, a private equity firm with Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) and Phenomen Ventures participating. This brings the companies funding to $145 million. Previous backers include Sequoia Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Crosslink Capital, Accel Partners, CompuCredit, Omidyar Network, Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures and Volition Capital. Prosper has riden the roller coaster of the peer-to-peer lending, an area which is now leading the disruption in the financial services. Prosper pioneered the concept of people-to-people lending in the U.S with its launch in 2006. The startup hit a rough patch in 2008 when the SEC stopped all lending on the platform because the company didn’t register as a seller of securities.