For crowdfunding purposes, a “person” is a rather legalistic entity, whose definition takes us a long way from common-sense, everyday language. A human being is a person in the eyes of the law, as is a big company. So Mrs Smith is a person, and so is Rolls-Royce plc. Both Mrs Smith and Rolls-Royce are capable of being among the persons who make up the crowd that does the funding. We’ll go into more detail on who’s in the crowd later.
As we say, crowdfunding is a general term for the process of raising money. Back in the early days of email, people who raised money for charity by emailing all their friends in a big group email were doing a primitive form of charity crowdfunding. Other common purposes for crowdfunding are to raise share capital investment (the person in the crowd takes a direct stake, or shareholding, in the company seeking funds). Many commentators say this process rather risky, and that a high percentage of the typically young companies seeking funds fail. It is known as equity crowdfunding.
The purpose of the fund raising on Money&Co.is to lend money to much more mature, developed businesses with a strong profit record. The process does not involve investing, but lending money. Its technical name is credfund lending, or peer-to-peer (P2P) business lending (a person, human or corporate, lends to a business).
Money&Co. is in the P2P business-lending sub-sector of crowdfunding and is part of the fast-growing trend in crowdfunding loans, quick, fast, and at rates that work for borrower and lender alike.