Money Watch – Personal Finance Blog

A new website has launched which is promising to be a “game-changing alternative to conventional banking”.

CivilisedMoney is the brainchild of Neil Crofts and Jason Scott, who hope that people-to-people technology will revolutionise funding, investing and lending, making it more transparent, fairer and indeed, more civilised than from traditional sources.

civilisedmoney will enable people to invest, donate, lend, borrow and transact money with each other directly at fair and transparent rates, cutting out need for the middlemen, the banks. When fully operational civilisedmoney will offer a full range of people-to-people financial services products traditionally provided by banks. There is no fractional lending, no excessive bonus payments, no gambling with your money, no hidden and unfair fees or charges.

Lenders such as Zopa have shown that peer-to-peer services can be successful and civilisedmoney will be bringing together a range of these services. To begin with, they’re offering Crowdfunding (using the Crowdcube platform) to enable startup businesses and ventures to raise capital.

They’re also using CrowdCube to secure some of their own funding, giving all of us the opportunity to own part of the business for as little as £10. They’re looking for up to £100,000 for a 10% stake in the business. Here’s Neil Croft’s pitch:

My initial thoughts are that this is a worthy venture (I’ve even helped out with the funding, so I guess I should now declare that I’m a shareholder), but being worthy doesn’t necessarily mean that it will work.

One of the biggest issues civilisedmoney will have is gaining trust from those looking to invest, borrow or lend. There may be big mistrust of banks, but consumers still feel comfort in trusting their money to brands that they know well (and the banks have deep pockets to ensure it stays that way).

I hope this isn’t an insurmountable problem; not only do our banks need a kick up the backside, but the added competition should improve the financial services industry for consumers and businesses, and peer-to-peer ventures such as civilisedmoney could be just what is required.