Online lending platforms in blockchain partnership

Much has been discussed on how to suture together the online lending and blockchain industries, now one start-up has a use case.

More than a dozen online lenders including Funding Circle, SoFi, OnDeck and Avant have partnered with blockchain startup Spring Labs to use distributed ledger and crypto technology in a bid to prevent fraud, enhance ID verification and lower origination costs.

Spring Labs, which recently added Gary Cohn, former president of Goldman Sachs and economic advisor to President Trump, as an advisor, closed one of the largest early rounds for a blockchain start-up last year at just shy of $15m.

Its new service will aim to help platforms with the fight against fraudulent activities and the the expense of exchanging consumer credit data with credit bureaus.

Adam Jiwan, CEO of Spring Labs, said: "In the financial services sector, the problems faced by one are often the problems faced by all, and we can better root them out if we work collaboratively,”

“Working together to share intelligence and anonymized data means we can all be more effective, which benefits the industry, each of our companies and, most importantly, the consumers," he said.