This is a question I see a lot. Currently, there are many states that are simply not open to people who want to invest in peer to peer lending. Is your state one of them? Both Lending Club and Prosper have a different set of investor eligible states, which I will detail here.
Lending Club
Lending Club allows direct investment from 28 states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
If you don’t live in these states you may still be allowed to invest in Lending Club, although not directly. But you can open an account with Foliofn, their trading platform. Here you can buy notes held by other investors. There are many states available for investing via the trading platform that are not available for direct investment: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas.
To make it easier for you I have displayed everything on a map below.
Prosper
Prosper handles things a little differently. Basically, if you can’t invest in Prosper directly then you cannot invest at all. There is no additional list of states that are available to investors on the trading platform.
Prosper allows investors in the following 29 states: Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Both companies are working on adding new states so this list could change at any time. For an up to date list and to look at additional investor requirements you should check the investor help pages at Lending Club and Prosper.
