Welendus raises £100,000 after lowering crowdfunding target

PEER-TO-PEER payday loan platform Welendus has raised more than £100,000 through crowdfunding after relaunching its fundraising campaign on Seedrs two weeks ago.

The platform, which wants to shake-up the payday lending market by offering more reasonable interest rates, launched a crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs in January to raise £300,000, but closed that campaign two weeks ago and instead started a new one to raise £100,000.

Nadeem Siam, founder and chief executive of Welendus, said due to the regulatory process the firm had to close its first crowdfunding campaign early and aim for a lower target.

If it had not reached the £300,000 target on the initial campaign they would have had to repay all funders, so instead they messaged backers and closed the first campaign, repaid investors and gave them the opportunity to back a new £100,000 fundraising.

“This way we avoided having to make investors unhappy by closing the campaign and not having any funding,” Siam told Peer-to-Peer Finance News.

“Now we at least still have people on board. We are hoping to launch soon. It has taken slightly longer than expected but it is in the Financial Conduct Authority’s hands as we are awaiting full regulatory permissions.”

Read more: Welendus reaches quarter of crowdfunding target in first week

As of Wednesday morning, the Seedrs campaign had reached £115,185 with £60,000 coming from an anonymous donor.

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

Siam said there has been initial interest from around 20 lenders and enough support to meet its four to five month lending targets.