Welendus launches £300,000 crowdfunding campaign

PAYDAY peer-to-peer lender Welendus is looking to raise £300,000 through a crowdfunding campaign, as it pushes its launch date back to later this quarter.

The platform, which originally planned to launch in January, intends to turn around the reputation of the payday lending market by offering short-term, unsecured consumer loans at lower interest rates than the industry norm.

But a crowdfunding campaign launched on Seedrs this week to raise £300,000 from investors says Welendus is now aiming a soft-launch in the first quarter to allow it to test its systems.

Founder Nadeem Siam told Peer-to-Peer Finance News there was always a plan to have a crowdfunding campaign to raise awareness and provide funds for launch. He said he expected the platform to receive Financial Conduct Authority authorisation within a few weeks and would launch the platform in February or March once the crowdfunding money is raised.

Welendus is offering equity of 8.02 per cent through Seedrs in a 60 day campaign and has raised £61,160 so far.

The pitch says the platform plans to offer returns of up to 15 per cent to lenders and offers an APR at 172 per cent for borrowers, compared with up to 1,294 per cent in the wider payday lending market.

Borrowers will also get flexible terms and no penalty fees.

The money raised will go towards recruiting new staff, marketing, technology and initial funding for a guarantee account.

Read more: Payday loan requests double in first week of January
Read more: First FCA-authorised P2P payday lender has launched