Kabbage, the online platform for merchants looking to borrow working capital, is to enter the market for personal loans with the launch of a new consumer lending service, Karrot.
The Atlanta-based startup will now be competing directly with the likes of alternative P2P personal lending platforms such as Lending Club and Prosper Marketplace by offering consumer loans with the backing of banking partner Celtic Bank.
The fully-automated approval service is currently open for US customers only and will offer loans of up to $35,000 with repayment terms of 36 or 60 months.
Karrot boasts its platform will take a customer from application to approval within minutes, running on a similar big-data analytics platform as its big brother Kabbage. Kabbage is able to scour through a number of different data sources, including Facebook, to identify a business' ability to repay - while Karrot will utilise a streamlined version tapping into a customer's current account to identify cashflow and income.
The expansion of Kabbage's product portfolio is likely to continue as Rob Frohwein, co-founder and CEO, Kabbage, says: "We will continue to innovate beyond today's announcement, delivering real and robust technology solutions to the financial services industry."