If you don’t find the answer you are looking for, don’t hesitate to contact us, using the Contact Us link in the header of the page or by sending an email to support@weemba.com
Q: Is there a fee to use Weemba as a Borrower?
A: NO! Borrowers are never charged to register or to post projects to Weemba. Weemba even provides Borrowers with a no-cost credit score, from Equifax for individuals and Dun & Bradstreet for businesses. We do ask for your bank account, but that is only because we use it to help validate your identity.
Q: Why does Weemba want my Social Security Number?
A: We carefully validate your identity so that Lenders can be certain you are who you say you are when you create projects for them to consider. We ask for your address, driver’s license number, full name, date of birth and SSN and send that information to a third party automated system to make sure that it all matches the name you entered. We also ask you random personal questions, again provided by an automated third party, so that Lenders can be certain you are the person they communicate with, as well as to make sure no one else can ever register with your identity. When you create a project, you can choose to get and add a credit score (at no cost!) and your SSN is required to do that as well. Rest assured that your information will NEVER be sold or distributed to parties outside the Weemba process.
Q: What is an FEIN and why do I need one?
A: The FEIN is the Federal Employer ID Number. The US government assigns an FEIN to any business which pays employees. For a business, it is the equivalent of a Social Security Number and is used on all income tax forms to report the earnings and expenses of the business, including all employees paid by the business. If you’ve ever gotten a W-2 form, the FEIN of the issuing business is on the W-2. The IRS checks income reported by individuals against what was reported as being paid by the FEINs of the businesses. If you do not have any employees, you are probably a sole proprietor using your Social Security Number for reporting your business income. Sole proprietors can have an FEIN, but they have not filed any incorporation paperwork with a government agency.
Q: What does Weemba do with my FEIN?
A: Weemba only needs the FEIN of your business for two things: verifying that the business exists, which is done by a third-party automated process, and for a business to get a credit score for that business IF they want to publish it with a loan project. Those business credit scores are also provided through automated third-party processes. Your data will NEVER be sold or distributed to parties outside the Weemba process.
Q: How do I know Weemba is secure and that my information is safe?
A: All of the information you provide to Weemba is stored with state-of-the-art security protocols. We do not look at or evaluate any of your personal data ourselves; it goes to third-party services which take care of that. These companies are leaders in their industries and include Equifax and Dun & Bradstreet. We do not sell your email address or any other information! For more details, you can see the Weemba Privacy Policy.
Q: Is Weemba a peer-to-peer lending site?
A: Weemba does not get involved with the peer-to-peer lending market. In truth, there is no such thing as peer-to-peer lending in the United States; regulations do not allow it. Weemba does not loan money or match Borrowers to Lenders; we simply provide a space and the tools for potential Borrowers to best showcase their need to borrow money and for Lenders to see that and then approach them.
Q: Do I need to validate my identity every time I create a project?
A: No! Your identity validation is done once; at that time, you will create a Borrower ID that will be yours forever. You do not have to validate for each project; just log in with your existing email address and password.
Q: Can I leave Weemba?
A: Yes, you can delete your profile in Weemba at any time by going to your My Account page and clicking on Edit My Profile & Preferences. However, if you have registered as a Borrower, and choose to delete your profile, you will NOT be able to re-register in Weemba. For security reasons, to protect your identity and personal information, no new registration of your Social Security Number will be processed in Weemba. You may re-register as a Community Member, but you will need to choose a new Community ID to do so.
Q: What is a sole proprietor? How do I know if I am one?
A: Sole proprietors operate a business and own it entirely with no entity created by filing paperwork with the government. They have no partners or other owners and may or may not have employees. A lot of home-based businesses are run by sole proprietors. Sole proprietors in Weemba will use their personal credit information and Social Security Number to show credit worthiness so they will register as individual Borrowers and then create projects with business purposes. If you have filed paperwork to create an LLC, a partnership or a corporation, use your FEIN to register as a business. You can have an FEIN as a sole proprietor, but you should use your Social Security Number to register as an individual Borrower and use your personal information to borrow for business purposes when you need to.
Q: Why should I add photos or videos to my project?
A: A picture is worth a thousand words – and video even more! You can use videos and photos to show the human side of your project: people at work or spending money in your business, activity in the neighborhood where you want to buy a home, etc. Please be careful not to reveal your identity in the images; for example, as a baker, you could show video of a cake being decorated, or a case full of goodies, but not your sign or other items with your business name on them. This is your chance to be creative! Remember that we do not actually host videos; you have to upload them to YouTube and then provide a link to the video.
Q: What kind of documents should I consider adding to my project?
A: Upload and add anything that will help a Lender get more interested in your project. Business plans, PDFs of home plans or blueprints, photos of awards (black out any names!), spreadsheets showing income projections, tax returns, W-2 forms, bank statements – all of these things will help Lenders see the worthiness of your project. Remember that any file set to “public” must not contain any information that identifies you; keep the files that do set to “private!” All text files, MS Office files, PDFs and image files are acceptable.
Q: What does amortization mean? How do I know which kind is right for me?
A: Amortization is a fancy word for “the way you will repay a loan.” Common types of amortization include installments (most bills we pay like student loans and car loans), balloon (some mortgages) and lump sum (usually commercial). For a more in-depth discussion of amortization with details about all three common types, see here.
Q: What is the difference between an investment and a loan? Can I find investors through Weemba?
A: Loans must be repaid; investments can be lost. All loans have an agreement and a repayment schedule, sometimes called a promissory note. When someone invests in a business, they understand that it is a risk and they may lose their money or never see any profit from the investment. If your business that was loaned money fails, you still must repay the loan and all associated interest. For regulatory reasons, loans are the ONLY financial tools available in Weemba at this time. Under no circumstances can repayment plans for projects include a share in a business or other ownership.
Q: Why do I have to have a Borrower ID and a Community ID?
A: Getting a Community ID is the first step in Weemba. It allows you to do a lot of things, but you cannot use it to publish projects to be viewed by Lenders. You can participate in general forums, some project forums (that is up to each Borrower for each project) and read and comment on blogs and articles, as well as create drafts of projects. When you register as a Borrower, we carefully validate your identity, and at that time, you create a Borrower ID. The purpose of the Borrower ID is to keep your projects separate from anything you may say in a forum or comment and protect your privacy. No one but you knows that the project published by Phinatic213 was published by the same person who comments as JohnDoe1. This allows you freedom to comment within the Community as you wish without anyone connecting those comments back to your project.
Q: What is W-SEO and why is it important?
A: W-SEO is Weemba Search Engine Optimization. When you create a project, you have the opportunity to volunteer a lot of information that will help Lenders find your project. You can also share your project via social media and get people to vote for it. Businesses are requested to upload information about their business, including Articles of Incorporation and other documents. For every piece that is completed, for every vote your project gets, for every question you choose to answer, your W-SEO goes up. The higher it is, the higher your project will show in search results. For example, if you want a small business loan for $50,000 and so does someone else, and you choose to upload your tax returns and the other person doesn’t, your project will come up first even if EVERYTHING else is the same, because you provided more information. We do NOT judge the quality of your project in any way; we just measure how much information you gave when you created it.
Q: Does Weemba tell Lenders which Borrowers are the best?
A: No. We do not have anything to do with which Lenders will approach Borrowers. There are a lot of Lenders in the US, and a wide range of Borrowers they are looking to gain as customers. Lenders search for Borrowers based on their own set of criteria, which may include credit score, size of business, amount of loan, type of amortization and more. It is the Borrowers’ best interest to provide as much and as detailed information as possible so that Lenders conducting specific searches will find them.
Q: What does my credit score mean and why is it important? How is it calculated?
A: Your Equifax Credit Score™ is a number, between 280 and 850, that is used to show your risk as a Borrower. The higher your credit score, the lower the perceived risk to the Lender. Credit scores are important to show Lenders that you are a responsible Borrower, but they are not the only factor used in determining whether or not a loan is given. Credit scores are calculated by a variety of criteria, including how much debt you have, how on time your payments are, how much your payments are and any delinquent accounts you have. Getting your Equifax Credit Score™ and adding it to a loan project in Weemba WILL NOT affect your credit score in any way! For a more in-depth discussion of credit scores, the major credit bureaus and score calculation, see here.
Q: What happens when I grant an authorization request from a Lender?
A: All of your contact information and files that can identify you are hidden by your Borrower ID. When a Lender asks you for authorization to see those, it is because the Lender has seen enough information about you to decide they want to see more. When you grant that authorization request, the Lender is immediately able to see the following information: your first and last names, Social Security Number, FEIN number of your business (if applicable), address, phone number and email address, as well as any files such as business plans, tax returns, etc., that you have set to private. Please note that the information provided is enough for a Lender to run a credit check and they may do so without contacting you first; they may run one to help them decide whether or not to contact you. If you do not want a Lender to run a credit check, do not accept the authorization request.
Q: What does it mean to Favorite a loan project? What does that do?
A: When you favorite a project, you are essentially bookmarking the project for later reference. It will appear on your My Account page, in a column titled Favorites. This is a great place to save projects that you may want to check out for your own use, to copy pieces of what they’ve done, the way they added images, etc. When you see a project listed in that Favorites box, you can also see its W-SEO score under the name of the project. That W-SEO score lets you know how complete a project is, on a scale of .1-100. It’s up to you, but we think it’s always better to copy the style of projects with a higher W-SEO. Every time you favorite a project, it also helps the W-SEO of that project!
Q: What is a Loan Project?
A: Remember that Weemba is not a lender, nor a broker. Weemba does not approve or deny anyone’s request for a loan. Rather than completing a loan application or a loan request, we call the form that Borrowers complete and post to the site a “loan project.” It is a way to post all of the information about why a person or business needs to borrow money, plus all of the supporting documentation for that need, and for many lenders to see it at one time. It is NOT an application. Lenders can search through loan projects and send an authorization request to the owners of projects that they find interesting. Borrowers can accept or reject those requests as they choose. ALL loan projects are posted under and protected by the Borrower ID nickname so that Borrowers can safely post whatever information they want to.