Version 2.1.5: Quick bidding

Important update: You must send an email to APIServices@prosper.com asking to have your account enabled for API bidding. I think you have to send it from the email account that is associated with your Prosper account.

Personally I do not like the many pages that Prosper throws at you when you want to place bid. And as I have stated before I do not think the Estimated Loss is at all a relevant metric for placing a bid on a single listing. You can have an estimated loss based on an entire portfolio of listings, but not on a single listing (in my opinion). You can have an estimated chance of default, which is what I provide in the market analysis section.

Speaking of the Market Analysis... I have never found the Narrow selection useful. So I have modified. It now displays the same information as the Specific but minus the number of inquiries criteria. If you have a credit report with 0 inquiries the specific selection will find very few loans... use the Narrow to find more. Feedback is welcome.

My first public use of the new bidding by the API is included in this release. Back to my dislike of the many pages Prosper shows when you want to bid. I have now added a link, Place a quick bid. It provides a popup that allows you to specify the amount and the minimum interest rate, of course.

In order to use this feature you will have to login to the Prosper API. This login is separate from being logged into the website. Again I don't care about your email address or password. But if you want to use this feature you have to enter the values in a popup. It looks like this:

So click the place a quick bid link and you will be presented with this just once per session. Once successful, click the place a quick bid link again. Please note you cannot hit the enter key to sign in, you must click the button. You will then see this:


Please note, I do not validate the amount and bid rate fields. If you enter less than $50 a nice error message appears, if your interest rate is too high, you receive an okay error message. Both provided by Prosper. Now if you enter letters or other nonsense you get a less nice error.

Once the bid is successful, you will be presented with a message as well as an option to refresh the page, which I recommend you do so that you can see your bid like this. Note the bid type.


Also if you find this listing again on a search result it will correctly indicate your bid.

Enjoy.