Getting a loan was once a matter of heading down to the bank and applying. But with the technology boom of the last decade has given rise to a new way, where Web-savvy investors can connect directly with would-be borrowers.

Now, by filing Wednesday for an initial public offering, the leader in the so-called peer-to-peer lending industry, Lending Club, plans to test how popular and durable the business model can be.

Together with competitors like Prosper Marketplace, the company functions largely as an intermediary connecting those with money with those who want it. It is an industry that supporters say is becoming a robust alternative to traditional bank lending and largely exorbitant credit-card interest rates.

Since it began making loans in 2007, Lending Club has become the clear leader in the field, overtaking older rivals like Prosper in the process. From its founding through the first half of this year, the company says that it has financed more than $5 billion worth of loans and paid nearly $494 million in interest to investors in those loans.

That success has fed into high ambitions for future growth, although it is not currently turning a profit. In its prospectus Wednesday, Lending Club listed $500 million as a preliminary fundraising target — but could seek to raise even more, according to a person briefed on the matter. That initial goal would still be enough to rank the prospective public offering as one of the 10 biggest-ever stock market debuts of an Internet company.

From the start, the company has focused on relatively safe loans, using advanced computer algorithms that measure borrowers’ creditworthiness. While rates on loans can start at below 7 percent, the average interest rate is about 14 percent, which still remains below standard credit cards. The company takes a small cut of that percentage and pays the rest to investors in the loans.