E-commerce firm priceline.com and online loan center LendingTree, Inc. today announced a
strategic partnership designed to unite online buyers and sellers.
Scheduled to begin this fall, priceline.com said it will “enable consumers
to name their interest rate and terms for home mortgages by combining priceline.com’s unique, buyer-driven e-commerce system with the strength of the LendingTree Network.”
The priceline.com/LendingTree alliance will produce a home mortgage service
designed to let consumers
name the interest rate and terms of their home mortgage, the companies
said. Once a borrower names terms on the priceline.com site, LendingTree’s
proprietary software routes the information to the lenders most likely to
meet the borrower’s terms. Financial details were not disclosed.
“Successful e-commerce, whatever the industry, requires two components
buyers and sellers,” said priceline.com chairman and
CEO Rick Braddock. “Priceline.com has demonstrated that our
name-your-own-price model has the potential to attract huge
numbers of consumers across a wide range of industries. Now, with our
LendingTree alliance, we can guarantee those buyers
a broad selection of lenders and financing options on our first day of
service availability.”
Priceline.com recently received a patent for its name-your-price e-commerce
service, and reportedly collects more than $15 million in credit-card
guaranteed demand each
week from online consumers. It also recently named Braddock, a former Citicorp president, as its new CEO.
LendingTree, founded in 1996, said it has in place the LendingTree Network,
a group of name-brand financial institutions supplying all types of
consumer credit products to online borrowers.