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The self-confident founders of Kreditech lend money through the Internet: short-term mini-loans of up to €500, with the average customer receiving €109. Instead of requiring credit information from their customers, they determine the probability of default on their own, using a social scoring method that consists of high-speed data analysis. "Ideally, the money should be in customers' accounts within 15 minutes of approval.

Kreditech also requires access to Facebook profiles, so that it can verify whether a user's photo and location match information on other social networking sites, like Xing and LinkedIn -- and whether his or her friends include many with similar education levels or many colleagues working in the same company.

All of this increases the likelihood that Kreditech is dealing with a real person.