Read about all the activity happening within the Pigeon Loans community, and get an inside look into the developments taking place in our flock.

Stories From Our Flock | Pigeon Loans

A lot of amazing things have been happening lately! From our new user experience to our featured article in Forbes, and also our recent fundraising announcement, it's been a whirlwind of a start to the year for us.

Since the beginning, we've done our very best to provide people all across the world with a safe, secure, and easy-to-use platform for anyone to lend and borrow money with the people they know and care about. Our community and technology are built on trust and that trust powers every facet of Pigeon Loans. 🐣 

Even with so much good happening within our community, today we are taking a moment to pause and reiterate our commitment to trust. Recently, we've been made aware of individuals, groups, and entities using our name, image, or likeness to portray our services in an unethical light. Over the past few weeks, the team behind the Pigeon Loans magic has been working on thwarting external efforts to use Pigeon Loans' likeness to defraud and scam vulnerable individuals across the world.

Over the recent days, we've seen and heard about:

Members of Facebook groups pretending to be employees of Pigeon Loans in order to defraud uninformed individuals;

Anonymous individuals on the Internet creating and distributing Typeforms or other survey tools to collect sensitive personal data & information of susceptible people looking to apply for loans using our likeness;

Promises of unknown groups & individuals claiming to give out loans on our behalf after filling out an application and submitting an 'origination fee' via methods like CashApp or Zelle;

Various forms of fraud negatively affecting our customers previously executed via methods of pre-paid card usage;

These unethical and immoral acts described above are in no way associated with Pigeon Loans, our employees, brand, community, name, image, or likeness.

With economic activity slowing down across the world, prices rising, and financial uncertainty hitting more folks than ever before, we recognize that times are tough right now. Whether you are providing for your family or looking to make ends meet, we want to do everything in our power to make Pigeon Loans the best service it can be so that we can help you through these difficult times and not hurt you.

As we continue to grow and better enable people to help one another across the world, we want to make sure you protect yourself and make smart decisions as you interact with the community that is Pigeon Loans. So today we are reaffirming our commitment to do right by you!

Please protect yourself, and keep in mind these things when interacting with Pigeon Loans:

When in doubt, send us a note at support@pigeonloans.io or chat us online via our website.

Pigeon Loans will never ask for personal information outside our official channels.

Pigeon Loans, Inc. does not currently provide loans to anyone; we are not a licensed lender or partnered with one that enables us to distribute loans.

Our official email and messaging channels end in @pigeonloans.io or @pigeonloans.com, we do not own addresses ending in Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or other domain name providers.

Pigeon Loans is a free platform that will not charge you any mandatory fees (i.e., no origination fees, no subscription fees, no forced costs to use our services).

Pigeon Loans employees will never reach out to you outside of official company channels.

Our official business names are Pigeon Loans or Pigeon Loans, Inc. - we do not operate under any other name.

Our official channels, contact information, social media, posts, and more can all be found on our homepage www.pigeonloans.io 😊

We're excited to continue impacting lives for the better! We'll continue to support you as you continue to support us.

Brian Bristol & The Pigeon Loans Team 💫


At Pigeon Loans we are committed to providing you the smartest and safest platform to lend or borrow money with your friends and family. Protect yourself and watch out for fraudulent activity, scams, or other unethical behavior that may be associated with our likeness. 🧡

Word of Caution: Protect Yourself

Pigeon Loans is going to be free for all of our users.

Since day one, we’ve operated from an ethos of helping our users achieve their financial dreams while protecting their relationships. Many of the people we serve have been left out of the traditional credit system and are forced to go to predatory lenders who leave them worse off than when they started. We believe that making ‘friends and family loans’ a more common and positive experience will be great for people across the country.

The recent rise in inflation and record-breaking consumer debt has pushed millions to the financial brink. In a scenario where options are limited, going to friends and family for loans is the best course for many. A recent Bloomberg article highlighted the explosion of loans between people who know each other. The rise of this type of lending has come disproportionately from traditionally disadvantaged minority groups. 

We are serving the nearly 27 million Americans who are already borrowing from friends and family. The pain of broken friendships and awkward interactions should be reduced. Pigeon Loans does just this. We make it easier for a lender to offer a helping hand while giving borrowers a better chance to reach their financial goals.

In an effort to help these millions of borrowers we are making our core lending product 100% free to use. Yes, completely free!

How will we make money? As the Pigeon Loans community continues to grow, we will be able to offer our users referrals to other fintech products, banks, and partners that can support our customer’s journey. 

To cover costs, we will also continue to collect a small transaction fee (i.e. 3%) from borrowers or lenders who choose to move money using a debit or credit card on our platform, instead of using our ACH Bank Transfer or Freebird Payment options for which Pigeon charges no fees at all. We strongly believe that this new model serves us well as a company while also putting the financial situation of our users first.

Join The Flock! Sign up today.


Now anyone can use Pigeon Loans free of charge. Helping out someone in need shouldn't come at a cost, so because of this belief, our platform and all of its services are now free to use.

Pigeon Loans Is Now Free

Today we're welcoming our newest member to the Pigeon Loans team - Brennan Batalla! We got a chance to sit down and talk with our newest Director of Engineering and got the inside scoop into his life & what brought him to Pigeon Loans. 🐣

My name is Brennan, and I am the newest member of the Pigeon Loans team coming in as the Director of Engineering. I could not be more excited to be working for such an innovative company and supportive team, backed by an equally supportive community propelling us forward. I want to use this post as a way for you all to get to know a little bit more about me and what I will be bringing to the Pigeon Loans team. 

Let’s start from the beginning, I was born and raised in the great state of New Jersey and where I currently still reside. My father moved to the USA from Ecuador before I was born, making me a first-generation American on my Dad’s side. I attended Rowan University in South Jersey where I graduated in 2015 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. A few years later, I furthered my education and received a Masters in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology. 

During my career, I have worked for some of the biggest companies: Amazon, ATT, Comcast, and Capital One. I am an avid coder, and working for big companies often strained my freedom to learn and experiment, so after my day job, I would immediately pick up my personal laptop and start building an app or website for a new idea I came up with, or start playing with a new technology I was curious about. The experience I gained from working for these large tech giants was valuable, but I have never felt quite at home, like a bird without a flock.

When I was searching for my next home, Pigeon Loans really stood out to me as a company. I immediately was enticed by the product and aligned with the company’s goals and mission. After meeting with the company’s founders, Brian and Kaben, and learning more about the company, I knew that I had found my flock. From my own experience, without Pigeon Loans, asking for money from friends or family can be a risky business, adding unnecessary strain to close personal relationships. With the service and documentation Pigeon Loans provides, it has proven time and time again to ease those tensions. Asking for money doesn’t need to stress relationships.

Some more about myself: When I am not coding, you can usually find me at the gym, running, or grabbing beers with friends. I love to travel, prior to COVID when international travel was easier, I often vacationed abroad to Europe. Since Covid, I have road-tripped across the U.S. three times! Just last month I returned from an unbelievable 6-month cross-country road trip with my girlfriend in my Jeep Grand Cherokee. During that trip, we stopped at many of the great national parks, Zion being my favorite, followed closely by Rocky Mountain National Park. I am also a big snowboarder; this past winter I went snowboarding 18 times at various resorts in Oregon, Utah, and Colorado! 

So, yea, that’s me. I’m more than excited to be part of the team and am already amazed by how far Pigeon Loans has come. I am honored to be part of the journey moving forward! If you’re curious to learn more, feel free to find me on LinkedIn, I am always happy to connect. 

There are so many amazing people working behind the scenes to make Pigeon Loans an amazing community for everyone. Take some time to learn about our Director of Engineering - Brennan Batalla!

Meet Our Flock: Brennan Batalla

Everything you need to know about the Pigeon Loans x Champion Sweatshirt Giveaway

When Pigeon Loans was formed, we decided to create and design a special Pigeon Loans sweatshirt to thank those who helped support us along the way. However, we’ve realized over the past few weeks that Pigeon Loans would not be what it is today without all of our supporters. So to commemorate the upcoming holiday season and give back to our community we are announcing the launch of a giveaway!

As a thank you for being a part of our flock and to brighten up your holiday season a bit more than usual, we are giving away:

Our limited edition Pigeon Loans branded Champion sweatshirt and $500 USD!

Starting October 26th, 2020, and through December 31st, 2020, you can enter for a chance to win this prize. Come January 1st, 2021, we will take all of the eligible entries, randomly shuffle them, and pick 8 winners for our inaugural giveaway.

On December 19th, 2020, we extended the deadline for entries to January 31st, 2021. Winners will instead be decided on February 1st, 2021.

The rules for entering the sweepstake are simple:

Share, like, retweet, or react to any Pigeon Loans social media post with the hashtag #postapigeon.

Send at least one loan offer (“Post A Pigeon”) to someone you know and trust. If you are unsure of how to send a loan offer, check out the step by step instructions below.

If you meet both of these requirements before January 31st, 2021, your Pigeon Loans account will automatically be entered into this giveaway. Once the giveaway has ended, and the winners have been randomly selected, we will reach out to them via email by February 6th, to congratulate them, and coordinate the logistics of delivering their prize!

Visit the Pigeon Loans website at www.pigeonloans.io, and enter in your email and the email address of the individual with whom you would like to send your loan offer too. If you have not yet created an account, you’ll follow our example below, and upon clicking “Sign Up & Post a Pigeon” you will be prompted to create your new Pigeon Loans account. If you are already a part of our flock, simply navigate to this same area of our homepage, enter in the appropriate email addresses, and hit “Post A Pigeon”.

After creating your account and leaving our homepage, you will be redirected to the loan offer page. We call this our Negotiation Portal, and there you will be able to enter in the details of the loan you would like to start. Once you have filled out how much you would like to lend or borrow, how long you want your loan to last, and whether you want to incorporate an interest rate, your loan offer will be sent to all both you and your invitee.

At this point you will have created your first loan offer and with a simple like, retweet, share, or reaction, you’ll be entered into our giveaway.

We’re super excited about this giveaway! We know $500 will go a long way for some of you, and for others it may just go towards buying the latest PS5 or Xbox (hey, we don’t judge). Whichever way you decide to spend your cash, we at least know you will look amazing in our Pigeon Loans sweatshirt.

For a limited time only, we are giving away our exclusive Pigeon Loans x Champion Branded Sweatshirt. This is the season of giving and there's no better time to reward our flock than now.

Giveaway Announcement: Pigeon Loans Sweatshirt w/ A Pocket Full of Cash

Whether you have asked to borrow some money to start your dream business, or have lent your brother cash to buy a new car, you are probably familiar with all the pains of creating a loan with friends, family members or loved ones. It’s exhausting having to deal with the questions that come up like “When am I going to get paid back?”, “How much money do you need?”, “What are your feelings about including an interest rate?”, or “How do I prove I repaid all of my debts?”

As we are all well aware, instead of dealing with these headaches, we often just give up on the loan process, send our distant cousin thrice-removed money, and hope for the best. After dealing with this agonizing process and not having a viable solution to navigate it, the Pigeon Loans founders decided it was time to create a platform that would make sending Johnny that $2,000 for his new half restaurant — half art studio in Bermuda a whole lot easier.

The concept of Pigeon Loans was born out of heightened frustration and fortunate timing. The unique and strange times surrounding COVID-19 allowed many people the opportunity to start projects they have always wanted to try but didn’t have the time nor resources to start them. The internet saw thousands of slices of baked banana bread, needle stitching crafts, and push-up challenges. Some people even decided to start extensive DIY home remodeling projects. If you are going to be confined to the four walls of your house, you might as well make them look pretty, right?

With all this happening and with too much time on his hands, Pigeon Loans Founder & CTO, Brian, had an idea. One afternoon, he was sitting around the house listening to an episode of The Investor’s Podcast, guest-starring Jim Mckelvey, the co-founder of Square. The podcast episode titled The Innovation Stack explained that successful companies are built by normal people who experienced a problem, saw a solution, and took the risk to solve it by any means necessary. Jim implied that true innovation comes from wanting to correct an existing need within society, not simply copying an idea and putting a new twist on it. Brian, sitting around his house on that particular afternoon, realized that he was just a normal guy who experienced an incredibly frustrating process most of his adult life. He believed, like Jim at the beginnings of Square, other people around the world were likely experiencing this same problem of wanting but not being able to create a loan with someone they trust.

On numerous occasions, Brian has lent his mother some money. Brian would send his mother the money she needed. No matter how much his mother promised to restore her debts, Brian knew full well he would probably never get those funds back. Many loans were forgiven, and ultimately he lost track of how much money he had sent his mother over the years. With each passing loan, Brian’s frustration grew and ultimately morphed into a dream, one in which he could use a service that would simplify, provide structure, and make it easier for him to get at least some of his money back.

I can’t think of a good reason as to why people who want to start a project, build a house, enroll in college, or open a bakery should not have access to a simple platform that allows them to seek funding from a loved one. There is no reason why loans have to be terrifying, stressful, inaccessible, or confusing. Listening to Jim Mckelvey speak on T.I.P, helped Brian realize that he could turn his dream into a reality and build a tool that would help simplify life.

After spending a few weeks conceptualizing the platform, Brian quickly brought on a co-founder, Tilly, to help out with Pigeon Loans. While he leveraged his software engineering background to build Pigeon Loans from scratch, Tilly tackled the business, legal and operational side of Pigeon Loans. The co-founders worked quickly, understanding that Pigeon Loans might be helpful to people experiencing financial trouble due to COVID-19, but more importantly, the founders were excited to build something that would hopefully make people just a little bit happier.

And with that, three months into a global pandemic, Pigeon Loans was born.

Read the origin story about how a global pandemic spurred one of the greatest technological innovations of the past decade - Pigeon Loans.