Traditional banks are finding out new competition lurks everywhere.

Pureplay startups like marketplace lenders, Lending Club and Prosper are originating billions of dollars of loans every quarter. Though volumes are small compared to total SMB outstanding loans (which in 2013 stood at $585 billion), some banks are turning to the marketplace lenders to buy loans, opting to partner instead of compete.

This move towards alternative lending, core to banking services, isn’t just a US phenomenon. Funding Circle, another leader among the current class of startup online lenders, has global aspirations.

Funding Circle’s co-founder, Sam Hodges recently explained to  Tradestreaming:

Our vision for Funding Circle is as a global lending exchange, where business from all over the world come to find finance from an army of investors, big and small. Small businesses are underserved in most of parts of the world, and we believe our marketplace model can help millions of businesses and investors to get a better deal. At the moment, we are focusing all of our energy on building a successful business here in the UK, USA and Europe.

There are high hopes for marketplace lending. Some investors, like Foundation Capital’s Charles Moldow, are betting on the market, between cannibalization and traditional banks moving into marketplace lending themselves, can grow to be a trillion dollars.

P2P Lending Presenation from foundationcap

FROM BANKS TO ECOMMERCE PLATFORM

It’s not just marketplace lenders taking aim at banks. Traditional ecommerce players want in, too. Amazon isoffering loans to handpicked sellers on goods on its ecommerce platform.

Like marketplace lending, ecommerce firms entering financial services isnt’ just happening in the US: PayPal’s Working Capital loans for small businesses has lent more than $1 billion to over 60,000 small businesses in the U.S., U.K. and Australia. Alibaba, the giant Chinese ecommerce platform, launched a money market fund for sellers to store their working capital. Within just 10 months, the fund, called Yu’e Bao had more than $90 billion in short term capital. That’s money that used to be kept in banks.