For existing customers, you can still log in to your account, make extra payments, and contact us for customer service issues, until you are notified with your new customer service contact information.  The major change we’ve made is that you can no longer add or change Help on your account.

If you are interested in opening a new account, our “Borrow” or “Invest” pages will take you directly to one of our great credit union partners who can give you a great rate and personal customer service.

We cannot say enough good things about our credit union partners – and because credit unions are not caught up in the financial meltdown on Wall Street like the big banks, they are still making plenty of loans at great rates.  One of our colleagues in the UK mistakenly said that our credit union partners had “pretty much stopped making loans” – that is not the case at all.  In fact, our credit union partners made more loans through Zopa last month than the month before.  Credit unions are a great place to turn as conventional banks stop making new loans because they still have strong balance sheets and are still looking to grow their businesses.

For our part, we are still here and focused on delivering excellent service to our customers during this transition period.

Drum roll, please…

(pretend the Zopa anthem is playing, with great pomp and circumstance)

In 1st place, representing the great state of Minnesota, we have tommienocker. Congratulations tommienocker! Your $15.43/mo of new Help was a new world record.

In recognition of outstanding Zopa-ness, tommienocker will receive a gold medal in the form of a $1,000 Zopa CD, and a $50 reduction of his October Zopa loan payment!

In second place we’ve got lynndriette, who is borrowing to help fund her graduate degree. lyndriette brought home $8.33/mo of new help, keeping tommienocker very honest. Rock on lynndriette!

lynndriette will bear the silver medal — a $750 Zopa CD, and a $50 reduction of her October loan payment.

And in third place we have an amazing comeback by dfargher, who lept into the top three in the final few days of the competition. Her final Help tally was $6.40, and for that she gets our bronze medal: a $500 Zopa CD and $50 reduction of her October loan payment.

Congratulations to our three Zopa Help Champions!

So many people passed the $.50/mo Help goal that we can’t name them all here, but we’ll be sending everyone a special congratulations and notice of their $50 prize.

Thanks for playing everybody!

And now comes the hard part…tallying the votes (er, the help).

Remember, we are counting all CD’s that people applied for in August. That means that if someone applied for a CD on August 31st, but it hasn’t commenced yet, we’ll still count it once it does.

Why is that important? Because that means that the smoke hasn’t cleared at the finish line yet.

There was such a flurry of activity in the last week or so, that we’re still waiting to see who will claim our fabulous prizes. We’ll post the winners as soon as the results are known.

For now, let’s give everyone who participated a big round of applause — ya done great!

With only 5 days left in the How Low Can You Go? Help Challenge, we’ve decided to take another peek at the race.

To all of you who’ve made the leap already, congrats! To everyone else, there’s still plenty of time to get on the horn and make it happen. Remember, the promotion counts every CD application submitted in August, so even if the CD doesn’t commence until some time in September, it’ll still count. You too could get 50 smackers from Zopa!

For those of you who’ve somehow missed all the fanfare this month, a quick recap:

- All borrowers who receive $.50/mo or more of new help will receive a $50 reduction of their October Loan payment.

- The three borrowers who receive the most new help in the month of August will receive a Zopa CD of their very own. These CD’s will earn 3.75% interest over the course of the year, and will help the borrowers of your choice (you can’t help yourself though — that would just be squirrely).

- First place gets a $1,000 Zopa CD, 2nd gets $750, and 3rd takes home a clean $500 CD.

And now, without further ado, the front-runners for our super special prizes:

1. tommienocker, with an astounding $15.43/mo in new Help!
2. lynndriette, standing tall with $8.33/mo.
3. jdhogan, keeping everyone honest with $4.25/mo.

These are the current top 3, but these borrowers are snapping at their heels:

4. Cubbiesnexty, with $3.41/mo
5. dfargher, with $3.20/mo
6. shadowcat7, with $1.75.

But this race ain’t over yet. There are still 5 days for people to submit applications! Whose gonna be the next Usain Bolt and shatter the Zopa monthly Help record?

We’re not going to give away the specific amounts of help that you’re receiving. That would spoil the big finish down the stretch.

But just for fun, here’s the ranking of our top 5 Help getters, as of today:

1. lynndriette
2. jdhogan
3. cubbiesnexty
4. shadowcat7
5. mathgod

That’s a pretty diverse crop of Zopa-ites, wouldn’t you say?

Great job so far, guys! Now let’s see if you can keep up the good work!

And if you don’t see your name on this list, don’t worry — it’s only half time! There’s still plenty of time to catch up!

For all those folks out there scratching their heads and wondering how best to get in on the fun, we’ve prepared some helpful tips that might get your Help campaign jump-started:

1. Make sure your Zopa Profile is “Public”. To do that, go to your account settings and make sure that your profile is set to “show in search results”. This way Zopa investors can find you when they apply for a Zopa CD.

2. Use our handy-dandy Promote Your Profile tool to send an email to the potential Helpers in your life. All you have to do is enter the email addresses you’d like to send a message to here, and we’ll take care of the rest.

3. Use your Zopa profile to tell your story! You don’t need to itemize everything you plan on doing with your loan — just tell the community about yourself! What’s your favorite mid-day snack? Are you left-handed? How many different Springfields have you ever been to?

4. Finally, a well-timed conversation with that special someone in your life never hurts. That special someone who has $500 sitting in a droopy 0.50% APY savings account. You can rescue them from the doldrums of big banks and low interest by steering them towards a shiny new Zopa CD!

Now get out there and get some Help!

(phew. posting two days in a row really gets me going, apparently.)

As promised, Zopa will be holding a contest in the month of August, to see who can get the most new Help.

We call it the “How Low Can You Go? Limbo/Help Challenge,” (or HLCYG?L/HC for short). The more you lower your monthly loan payment with Help, the more money we’ll give you.

To start, we’re gonna give 50 smackers to every Zopa borrower who receives $.50/month of new Help in the month of August. (for all of you lucky devils already receiving that much Help, you’re welcome to play too, but the Help you’re already getting doesn’t count — that would be cheating).

After that, we’ll be giving big ole Zopa CD’s to the 3 borrowers who receive the most new Help (over $.50).

Here’s how it works:

1. You work by hook or by crook to get people to buy Zopa CD’s that help YOU. The Zopa CD is a great deal for anyone with at least $500 to invest, and it’ll actually lower your monthly loan payment and interest rate!

2. If you receive more than $.50/mo of help from Zopa CD’s purchased in the month of August, we’ll put up $50 towards your October Loan Payment. It’s a 50-50 trade, except you get both 50’s.

3. The 3 borrowers who receive the most help (over $.50) from CD’s purchased in August will each receive a Zopa CD of their own. 1st place gets a $1,000 CD, 2nd gets a $750 CD, and 3rd takes home a $500 CD. Your CD gives Help to other people for one year, after which all that moolah is yours!

We’ll be posting updates and tips on how to get Help, so check back here for those tidbits.

In the meantime, how low can you go?

Ebbene, un equipaggio milanese è in partenza il 2 agosto: Marco detto Ciolo - prestatore pioniere che per l’occasione ha chiesto e avuto un piccolo prestito per finanziarsi il viaggio - Stefano, altro prestatore, e i loro amici Francesco e Agata. Il loro diario di viaggio sarà sul blog creato ad hoc, ma useranno anche Flickr e Youtube . Li seguiremo con curiosità (e forse un po’ di invidia) anche da qui, con qualche post di aggiornamento sulla loro avventura.

Naturalmente li abbiamo forniti di cartelli da uomo sandwich, vediamo cosa riescono a inventarsi!

PS: sono naturalmente benvenute tutte le foto degli Zopiani in giro per il mondo muniti di maglietta d’ordinanza.

For all the English speakers in the room, that roughly translates to:

This is holiday time for the Zopians, but who would guess that some Italian Zopians would have the idea of a coast to coast trip ending at Zopa US, San Francisco? Well, a Milanese team is leaving on August 2, heading for the US: it is composed of Marco aka Ciolo – originally a lender who has now got a small loan for financing the trip, Stefano -another lender -and their friends Francesco and Agata.

Their itinerary will be on a dedicated blog, but they will also use Flickr and Youtube. We will follow them with a great deal of curiosity (and maybe a little bit of jealousy) from here, with occasional updates on their adventure.

Naturally we are providing them with Zopa sandwich man signs, let’s see what they can come up with…

P.S. naturally we would welcome any photo of Zopians going around the world wearing our T-shirt.

Ahem.

Much better.

Ya’ll are in luck, because we’ve been cooking up something special for all you lovely Zopa-ites: a contest! Who doesn’t love contests? (especially ones that are ridiculously easy to win?)

It’s gonna be a chance for you to save a bunch of money on your monthly loan repayments, and earn some money to boot. You might call it, a “save and earn” plan. Ole Ben Franklin would be proud – the more you save the more you earn.

We’ll post more promotion details soon, but in the mean time, I suggest you start thinking about all the people you know who might be in the mood for a Zopa CD – a solid investment with a smiley face.

And check back soon for details because you could find yourself about $1,000 richer in no time.

This is the second year in a row that we’ve won a Webby, and all I can say is…it rocks. Seriously. I could get used to this.

For all you Webby fanatics, here’s a dramatic reenactment of how it all happened:

Webby Presenter: (opening e-envelope) …and the winner of the award for Best Financial Services Site of the Year is…Zopa.com!

Zopa: (e-sobbing with e-delight) Thank you! We’d like to thank the webcademy and our fellow nominees, as well as our developers, designers, and staff. We’d like to thank our mothers, our great-aunts, and all the bloggers who covered us. And above all, we’d like to thank our beautiful, passionate users. It’s been an amazing ride, and we would never be here…

*Webby Orchestra begins playing Webby theme-music*

Zopa: …if it weren’t for all our wonderful users. Users like AiflGrad, mraugust, and SuzCllns…

*Webby theme-music crescendos as Webby presenter shuffles Zopa off the stage*

Aaaaand scene.

Well. I guess they don’t call it the “Oscars of the Internet” for nothing.

Anyway, thanks to all of you lovely users, as well as everyone who voted for us. We couldn’t have done it without you.