A New Frontier of Socially Responsible Financial Sector: Microfinance and Peer-to-peer Lending

Peer-to-peer lending platforms (P2P) and microfinance are both innovative instruments,having the potential of promoting financial inclusion and respond to thelack of trust in traditional financial institutions experienced with the financial crisis.They both have recently experienced a great development and, at the same time,challenged legal systems' traditional legal categories and regulations. The presentwork focuses on P2P specialized in microfinance (matching MFIs/microentrepreneurs'need of funds with common people interest in lending small sums of moneyfor low returns or for free) but analyses in details and with examples the current legaldiscussion and developments about P2P lending and crowdfunding.