P2P crowdlending: from €261 to €964 a month and Mintos' 0.29% fee

Crowdlending: from €261 a month to €964 and the Mintos fee

The best month for this portfolio was also the worst. In June 2025, P2P loan income jumped to €964.27, well above average, and not because of extraordinary performance: a platform had bought back all loans from two markets and returned the capital with proportional interest. In the other months of that year, income ranged between €693 and €895. Earlier, in August 2023, it was €261.55.

Behind that series is crowdlending or P2P: buying loans —or fractions of loans— from an originator and earning a fixed rate agreed in advance. The thesis of whoever publishes these balances is that the result doesn't depend on the platform but on choosing the right originators. The response they get most insistently is different: show the bank statements and prove that the money actually comes in.

What is crowdlending and what returns does it promise?

Just as a fund distributes many investors' money among many companies, a crowdlending platform distributes it among loans. The investor advances the capital, the borrower pays interest, and the platform keeps a fee. The range handled: between 4.5% and 8% in factoring —advancing invoices to companies and public administrations—, and around 10-11% in consumer loans with a buyback obligation or mortgage guarantee. The risk is at a medium-high level.

The repeated recommendation never includes investing more than 15-20% of your net worth or concentrating in fewer than ten originators. And here appears the first technical distinction that almost nobody makes: Mintos is a marketplace where many independent originators offer loans; Robocash, on the other hand, presents several subsidiaries in different countries that all belong to the same group. If one falls, it's possible the others are dragged down too.

Why is Mintos no longer what it was?

Mintos is the sector's largest marketplace, it's regulated, and it withholds 5% at source for residents of the European Economic Area. Its loans are 'Notes' with ISINs, which for a Spanish taxpayer makes them potentially reportable on form 720. All that coexists with a recurring complaint: the platform doesn't filter the originators it admits well, so it's better to build your own Autoinvest for each one and control exposure manually.

In 2025 came the announcement that changed the conversation: an annual management fee of 0.29% from 16 May, applicable even to Autoinvests that the investor designs for a single originator. The argument of whoever runs the account is that this percentage exceeds what most index funds and ETFs charge and that, in a portfolio built by the client, there is no management by anyone. There are index funds that charge less than that.

From the €300-a-month goal to settling at €693

The series starts in August 2023 with €261.55 spread across Mintos, Robocash, Peerberry, Esketit, Twino and ViaInvest. September drops to €255.77 and October rises to €286.29. The stated goal was to earn €300 a month on the side from work, and it's reached in December, when Peerberry's late payments allow it to be exceeded. In May 2025 the total is already €895.15 and in June, the artificial record month, €964.27.

Then comes the slope: €777.12 in July, €736.19 in August and €693.27 in September 2025. That month, screenshots of each website are abandoned and the spreadsheet tables are pasted directly instead. The breakdown platform by platform, with its month-by-month ups and downs, is what allows you to see that the drop is not a default but a deliberate withdrawal of capital.

The originators that keep falling away

Ava Fin, Esketit's oldest and best-rated originator, was bought by a bank and no longer needed financing from individuals. Esketit then buys back the loans from Spain and the Czech Republic and, in July 2025, contributes €3.86: practically zero. The remaining originators —one from Jordan and another that sells defaulted loans in recovery— don't convince, and the capital leaves the platform.

Twino accumulates problems in its Vietnam business and the circulating recommendation is to sell on the secondary market, even the Polish loans. From Stikcredit, everything is withdrawn as loans mature. Afranga, where the replacement was expected to be placed, points to a 10% withholding at source pending verification and a market that barely offers new loans. Each closure forces you to reallocate capital or accept that it sits idle.

The suspicion of fraud and the standoff over the statements

The sector is not a scam or a Ponzi scheme, argues whoever keeps the account, just as any website or any company is not. And they add specific names of projects that did end badly: Kuetzal, Envestio and Housers. Against that, the objection is that a 10% return presented as almost fixed requires documentary proof, and that whoever asks for a bank screenshot isn't asking for anything out of this world.

The standoff tenses when the author of the tracking refuses to publish the transactions and responds that he doesn't need to legitimise anything, and when from the other side it's insinuated that the real goal is referral commissions. The defence is that there is a community of investors on Telegram focused on this method and that he himself also maintains an index portfolio and dividend stocks.

Swaper, Afranga's 16% and the index alternative

Swaper promises 14% and those who use it admit a black box: opaque accounts and a cash drag of between 10% and 15%, the percentage of money left uninvested waiting for supply. On Afranga, loans at 16% from Stikcredit appeared and later at 12% for twelve months. The temptation of high returns always comes with the same toll.

At the other extreme is the uncomfortable argument made by another forum member: that an index like the S&P 500 offers a comparable return with considerably less risk, and that taking on four times more risk to end up the same isn't worth it. Whoever defends P2P doesn't entirely deny it: they acknowledge they also have index funds, and that crowdlending is one more leg, not the whole house. With seven active platforms, a narrowing market and a newly introduced fee, the question isn't whether the 10% exists. It's how much of that 10% is return and how much is that the music hasn't stopped yet.