What is Debitum?
Debitum is an investment platform based in Riga and operating since 2018. Investors contract with SIA DN Operator, a Latvian company licensed as an investment brokerage firm since 2021. The platform sells notes of Latvian forest and land companies and asset-backed securities backed by business loans, and it has no secondary market.
The platform started out as Debitum Network, run by SIA PROSPERITU, an unlicensed company, before today’s DN Operator. The pitch today is double-digit, buyback-protected lending under a real licence, and the licence part holds.
How does Debitum work?
Debitum sells you securities issued either by a company that borrows your money itself or by a company set up to buy a loan originator’s business loans. Most of the notes come from three Latvian forest and land companies: the Latvian Forest Development Fund, LFDF, its sister fund LFDF II, and Baltic Terra. The asset-backed securities come from special-purpose companies that buy loans from loan originators, which Debitum calls partners, and Debitum’s 2025 annual report lists seven such companies that it owns.
Repayments travel from the issuer to Debitum and on to your account, and Debitum’s agreement obliges it to pay you only once it has received the money. The notes are secured by a pledge over the issuer’s shares and assets, with no buyback on those of the three forest and land companies.
Debitum earns from the issuers and loan originators whose investments it sells you, not from investors’ fees.
What you can invest in
Debitum offers three kinds of investment in October 2026, each from €10.
| Investment | What you own | Minimum |
|---|
| Notes | A note of the company that borrows your money, in a Senior or a Junior series, secured by a pledge over its shares and assets | €10 |
| Asset-backed securities | A security of a special-purpose company that bought business loans from a loan originator | €10 |
| Debitum Flow | Five-year Senior notes of LFDF II or Baltic Terra at 8% a year, with interest paid daily | €10, and at most €5,000 per note |
Junior notes bear an issuer’s losses before its Senior notes do. The businesses that borrowed behind an asset-backed security stay undisclosed, per Debitum’s help centre. Debitum Flow, launched on 11 September 2026, adds a way to ask for your money back before maturity.
What return can you expect on Debitum?
Debitum’s statistics give an average portfolio return of 14.83% a year, and the median Debitum investor on P2P Dash has earned 15.2% a year including cashback, across 579 portfolios, as of November 2026. Debitum’s 14.83% holds so far, while LFDF and the other issuers keep paying. Debitum’s statistics show the Chain Finance claims it moved to a subsidiary as current, with 90% of that money still outstanding.
I expect about 11–12% a year on a Debitum portfolio started now, after the 5% tax Debitum withholds from EU and EEA residents. That’s the rates on offer in October 2026, about 12% on average, less that tax, and investors pay Debitum no fees. The median also holds cashback and loyalty bonuses that a new portfolio doesn’t start with.
The 15 investments open in October 2026 offered 7.5–15% a year, about 12% on average, with LFDF at the top of the range and the outside loan originator Evergreen Capital at the bottom. Most of those rates come from the same few companies that hold most of the money, and a loyalty programme adds 0.5–2% a year on larger balances, on terms the Debitum bonus page sets out. Three things come off the rates on offer:
- the 5% withholding tax, about 0.6 percentage points of a 12% rate
- cash that earns nothing while it waits for a note
- interest that an issuer short of money pays late or only in part, as the prospectuses of LFDF II and Baltic Terra allow
Debitum has the fourth-highest Returns score of the 21 platforms I’ve reviewed, 4.6 out of 5. The score rests on what investors kept last year and this year, not on advertised rates and not on the risk of losing money, which Is Debitum safe? covers.
Is Debitum safe?
Debitum protects your money against its own failure but not against the failure of the companies your money is lent to, and two-thirds of that money goes to one forest fund and its sister fund. The platform is licensed in Latvia, keeps your cash off its own balance sheet and belongs to the compensation scheme that pays up to €20,000 if Debitum can’t return what’s yours. The forest fund, LFDF, borrows only from Debitum’s investors, and the pledges behind the forest notes leave out the land the money buys. There’s no published loss figure, and Debitum’s statistics showed no late payments on 19 October 2026, while counting Chain Finance’s book, frozen since 2022, as current. The risk in the assets you hold remains fully yours.
Debitum has the fifth-lowest Safety score of the 21 platforms I’ve reviewed, 1.3 out of 5. The score rests mostly on how Debitum is built, a licence and client money kept apart against a book concentrated in one forest fund, thinly capitalised issuers, a collateral agent Debitum owns and an investor’s lawsuit against the operator, and partly on a record in which the one default has stayed unresolved since 2022. Product pages that describe the collateral more strongly than the prospectuses do also count against it.
Is Debitum regulated?
Yes, Debitum is regulated as an investment firm in Latvia. SIA DN Operator has held a Latvian investment brokerage licence since September 2021, and Latvijas Banka has supervised it since 2023, when the central bank took over the Financial and Capital Market Commission. Portfolio management was added to the same licence in December 2024, the change Debitum markets as becoming “a full investment company”, so it is one licence, not two. Debitum is one of 5 of the 21 platforms I’ve reviewed licensed under MiFID II, the EU’s rules for investment firms, as of September 2026.
The licence covers how Debitum handles your money and your orders, not whether the companies behind your notes can pay.
What happens if Debitum fails?
Your notes and uninvested cash on Debitum stay yours if Debitum itself fails, because the notes are the issuers’ debts and the agreement keeps your cash off Debitum’s balance sheet. Deposits go to an account in DN Operator’s name at BluOr Bank in Riga, and Debitum’s 2025 accounts show €2.15 million of investors’ uninvested cash at the end of the year. If Debitum can’t return your money or notes, Latvia’s investor compensation scheme pays the full amount up to €20,000, and it pays nothing when an issuer or borrower defaults. The help centre states that scope, while the ProtectionPlus page sells “€20 000 insolvency protection” for platform insolvency or mismanagement of funds and leaves the exclusion out.
The notes exist only in Debitum’s own register, and every payment on them runs through Debitum as paying agent. The agreement has no section on Debitum’s own failure, caps Debitum’s liability to you at the cash in your account when a loss occurs and says nothing about what happens to your cash if the bank holding it fails. The prospectuses say only that an administrator supervised by Latvijas Banka would take over and Debitum would “continue servicing its clients”. If Debitum failed, your notes would still be the issuers’ debts, but getting paid on them would depend on an administrator and on a replacement paying agent that no document names.
DN Operator itself is profitable and audited. It earned €2.4 million of commission income in 2025 and a €507,000 profit with 12 employees, and BDO gave its 2025 accounts an unqualified opinion.
Borrowers
Most of the money on Debitum is borrowed by three Latvian forest and land companies themselves, through the notes they issue. On 19 October 2026, Debitum’s own statistics put €75.0 million of investors’ money outstanding, of which LFDF and LFDF II held 66%, Baltic Terra 13.5% and the loan originator Sandbox Funding 10.9%. DN Funding Alpha, Debitum’s own subsidiary, held 3.1%, and the two outside loan originators, Triple Dragon and Evergreen Capital, 6.1% between them. The 15 investments listed that day were the whole market, and eight of them were LFDF’s.
LFDF buys forest land and felling rights in Latvia, employs four people and had €38.5 million of assets against 7.9% equity at the end of 2025, per its audited accounts. Those accounts show €32.3 million of loans against bonds arranged through Debitum as its only borrowing, and all €2.3 million of its 2025 interest was paid on that money. Its operations used €32.6 million of cash in 2025, mostly covered by €28.3 million of new borrowing. LFDF’s growth rests on new money from Debitum’s investors.
LFDF II was registered in March 2026 with €2,800 of share capital by the company that owns LFDF, and its prospectus states it had bought no property by the prospectus date. By 19 October it carried €1.6 million of notes, and the series Debitum offered first were Junior notes. Baltic Terra, the second-largest borrower at €10.2 million, was registered in June 2025 with €20,000 of share capital and one person, Jānis Lezdiņš, as sole shareholder and sole board member. Together the two carried €11.8 million of notes that day. Baltic Terra’s first-year revenue of about €750,000 came mostly from selling forest properties and felling rights.
Documents on the record show part of what ties these companies together. LFDF was called JUNO ESTATE until September 2024 and owned by AS Juno until January 2025, per its accounts, and it now shares an owner with LFDF II. Sandbox Funding’s listings carry the brand “JUNO by Sandbox Funding”, and Sandbox itself belongs to Debitum’s CEO by Debitum’s own account, as set out under Conflicts of interest. Karsten Aichholz’s investigation maps seven of the nine companies Debitum worked with in early 2026 to one circle of Latvian owners, and on Debitum’s October statistics that circle, with LFDF II beside its sister fund, carries about 91% of the money outstanding.
Skin in the game is advertised on Debitum, not evidenced at the issuers that matter. The ProtectionPlus page says each asset carries a 10–30% loan-originator share, yet Debitum’s own partner data lists a skin-in-the-game value of 0 for both forest funds and Baltic Terra, against 10 for Triple Dragon and Evergreen. The same page lists co-control bank accounts only for Triple Dragon and Sandbox Funding, not for LFDF or Baltic Terra, the two largest exposures.
Aichholz’s investigation of March 2026, built from Latvian land-registry and company filings, found that LFDF bought 81% of its properties from companies tied to one circle of sellers, at an average markup of about 50% after holds averaging 203 days, and measured a €24.6 million gap between LFDF’s booked inventory and the purchase prices in the registry. The platform answered with a statement that corrected two technical points, which Aichholz conceded and fixed, confirmed that LFDF and its main seller, AS JUNO, are related parties, and defended the prices with timber values and cadastral values that he contests in a published reply.
LFDF’s audited accounts carry an unqualified opinion from a sole-auditor firm that also audits Baltic Terra, and they contain no note on related-party transactions, although Debitum has confirmed AS JUNO as a related party. They book the inventory at cost, €36.8 million, of which €22.8 million is wood felling sites and €13.6 million property, while the registry prices Aichholz set against it cover only property purchases. Debitum’s blog put LFDF’s unaudited 2025 assets at €43.9 million in February 2026, and the audited accounts published in May show €38.5 million, with receivables €4.0 million lower.
LFDF II’s prospectus names Jānis Upenieks as the funds’ beneficial owner without mentioning the public office at Latvia’s finance ministry that Aichholz’s investigation says he held in March 2026. It also states that the issuer may in future buy forest land from AS JUNO, the seller at the centre of the markup findings.
Collateral
Debitum’s notes are secured by a pledge over the issuer’s shares and assets, and for the three forest and land companies the pledge leaves out the land your money buys. The first-ranking commercial pledge is held for noteholders by the collateral agent SIA DN Trustee, which Debitum’s 2025 annual report shows as its own subsidiary. Baltic Terra’s prospectus states that “the Collateral does not include the Land Portfolio” and that in an enforcement or insolvency “the Noteholders would be regarded as unsecured creditors” with respect to it. LFDF II’s prospectus adds that the absence of mortgages “may materially affect the practical recovery prospects of the Noteholders”, and Debitum’s own rating of LFDF says LFDF’s collateral “does not include real estate”. The pledge is registered for at least 150% of the principal, a figure the LFDF II prospectus calls a registration amount and not a valuation.
The forest and land companies’ notes carry no buyback. The prospectuses of LFDF II and Baltic Terra state that there are “no buyback or similar obligations”, so on a default you depend on the issuer’s own early redemption and on the pledge, worth what the issuer and its pledged assets can pay. Only Sandbox Funding, Triple Dragon and Evergreen Capital carry a buyback obligation in Debitum’s partner data, and the agreement doesn’t assign any loan originator’s buyback to you. The help centre calls the buyback the partner’s “option” in one article and something the loan originator “must” do in another.
Debitum’s investor-facing pages describe the security more strongly. The Baltic Terra note page says “every euro is backed by real, appreciating assets”, and the ProtectionPlus page promises “senior rights to recover up to 100%” from the collateral, while the LFDF II note page states that the security package doesn’t include a mortgage over individual land assets. Collateral that Debitum’s product pages promise and its prospectuses withhold counts against Debitum’s Safety score.
Debitum Trust Score
Debitum rates each issuer and loan originator with its own Trust Score, a letter grade from A+ down to F, and its credit committee reviews each score every year. Per Debitum’s method, the score weighs legal factors such as the collateral at 40%, financial factors at 40% and reputation, reporting and track record at 20%. On 19 October 2026, LFDF’s and Baltic Terra’s listings were graded A and Sandbox Funding’s B+, and LFDF II’s Senior Flow note was graded A while its Junior listings were graded B. The method post grades LFDF’s legal side on “a commercial pledge is in place over all shares and assets of the issuer”, and LFDF’s audited 2025 accounts mention no such pledge in their note on pledged assets. The grade is Debitum’s own view of companies that pay it, not an outside rating.
Defaults and recovery
Debitum’s homepage advertises a “0%* default rate in 5 years”, and its statistics showed no late payments at any issuer or loan originator on 19 October 2026. Chain Finance, a Ukrainian loan originator, froze investors’ money after the war began in 2022, and Debitum’s subsidiary DN Funding Alpha took over its obligations in August 2023, under a restructuring that cut the interest to 3% a year, payable once Ukraine’s martial law ends. The statistics show DN Funding Alpha’s book, €2.56 million funded, as current, with €2.3 million, 90% of it, still outstanding in October 2026, and the operator’s 2025 annual report carries the related claim balance unchanged to the cent from a year earlier. Karsten Aichholz counted €202,500 of repayments in the four years to March 2026. The zero holds because the platform’s one loan-originator default was moved rather than written off.
An investor has taken the operator to court. Case C75021625 claims damages from investment services contracts against SIA DN Operator and DN Funding Alpha at Riga’s Economic Court, and the next hearing is set for 29 January 2027, per the court-calendar trail in Aichholz’s investigation. No ruling had been reported, and no warning or sanction from Latvijas Banka against Debitum was on record, in October 2026.
Conflicts of interest
Debitum has four conflicts of interest with its investors, set out in its agreement, its prospectuses and its ownership.
- Debitum can change its agreement without your consent. Amendments take effect 20 business days after Debitum publishes them, or sooner if you accept them, with no way to object, and you can leave only once you hold no investments, as set out under Closing your account. The agreement also lets Debitum debit your account without notice for losses it says you caused, and change its price list at any time.
- Debitum is paid by the companies whose investments it sells you. It earns up to 4% of each note series from the issuer, per the prospectuses, and 1–3% a year of the money invested from loan originators, per its price list. Related companies paid 67% of its commission income in 2024 and 16% in 2025, per its annual report.
- Debitum’s own companies stand between you and your money when an issuer fails. DN Trustee, the collateral agent that holds your pledge, is Debitum’s subsidiary, and the prospectuses pay its costs and the costs of recovery before your principal. The agreement also has investors repay Debitum for the debt collector they appoint after a default.
- One of Debitum’s loan originators belongs to Debitum’s chief executive, by Debitum’s own account. Debitum’s page for Sandbox Funding says Debitum’s CEO is its sole owner, and Sandbox held 10.9% of the money outstanding on 19 October 2026.
How do you use Debitum?
You use Debitum in five steps, from signing up to choosing how your money is invested.
- Sign up as an individual or a company, and confirm your e-mail address.
- Answer Debitum’s questions about you and your investing experience.
- Pass the checks on Debitum’s Verifications page, which you need before you can invest.
- Add money by bank transfer from an account in your own name, which also unlocks withdrawals, or by internet bank or card.
- Choose how your money is invested, by hand, with auto-invest or in Debitum Flow.
Debitum is tied for the fifth-highest Usability score of the 21 platforms I’ve reviewed, 3.5 out of 5. The score rests on Debitum’s auto-invest, which filters by type, rate, term, amount and loan originator, and on the account statement and agreements you can download. Against it count deposit limits tied to your income, a selfie with your ID to change your e-mail address or close the account, and no filter for protection.
Opening an account
Debitum verifies your identity before you can invest, and asks for more documents as your deposits grow. Address verification allows transactions from €1,000 up to €15,000, documents showing where your money comes from unlock more, and deposits are capped at 85% of your documented annual income. It’s the price of the licence being real, and it means an investment firm’s paperwork rather than a fintech sign-up.
Deposits
Depositing on Debitum by bank transfer or internet bank is free, and you can also pay by card. The deposit form accepts no less than €10, and money can come only from a bank account in your own name. A bank transfer goes to the account that holds your cash and takes 1–3 business days. Only a manual bank transfer verifies your bank account for withdrawals, so an internet-bank deposit alone doesn’t let you take money out.
Auto-invest
Debitum has one kind of auto-invest, a strategy you set yourself, beside buying by hand and Debitum Flow.
| Way of investing | Who picks the investments | Limit per company | Getting out before maturity |
|---|
| Auto-invest | You, by rules you set | None, though you can leave companies out | None, held to maturity |
| Buying by hand | You, one investment at a time | None beyond your own choices | None, held to maturity |
| Debitum Flow | You, between LFDF II and Baltic Terra | €5,000 per note | A withdrawal request the issuer may refuse |
The strategy filters by type, rate, term and loan originator and sets the most it puts into one investment, as an amount or a share of your portfolio, but it has no filter for protection. When I looked at it on 19 October 2026, without setting up a strategy, its list of loan originators held six names: LFDF, LFDF II, Baltic Terra, Sandbox Funding, Triple Dragon and Evergreen Capital. Diversification inside Debitum is a setting, not an outcome, because three of the six are the forest fund, its sister fund and a loan originator Debitum says its CEO owns.
Tax reports
Debitum gives you no separate tax report, only an account statement that it says can be used for tax purposes. The statement downloads as a PDF or an Excel file for any period, arrives by e-mail within 10 minutes and lists your deposits, withdrawals, interest and tax withheld. The full-history export covers every transaction on the account, and a separate button downloads all of its claim agreements in one file.
Support
Debitum’s support runs through a chat in your account, which starts with an AI agent and hands you to a human one, and by e-mail and phone. My one request, an e-mail address change on 15 August 2026, went from the AI agent to a human agent, who asked for a selfie holding my ID, and was done four days later, over a weekend.
How fast can you get your money out of Debitum?
You can withdraw cash from Debitum for free, usually within 3 business days, once you’ve made one manual bank transfer from your own bank account. Invested money comes back only as each investment matures, because Debitum has no secondary market and its agreement has no early exit. The notes listed in October 2026 ran 9 to 36 months, and Debitum Flow’s notes run five years, with an early withdrawal the issuer may refuse. Money with an issuer that stops paying waits on recovery.
Debitum is tied for the third-lowest Liquidity score of the 21 platforms I’ve reviewed, 2.0 out of 5. The score rests on Debitum’s published terms, with free cash withdrawals weighed against investments held to maturity, no secondary market and a Flow withdrawal the issuer may refuse.
Withdrawals
Debitum withdrawals are free and usually take up to 3 business days, per its help centre. You can withdraw only uninvested money, and only to a bank account you’ve sent a manual bank transfer from, because internet-bank deposits don’t verify the account.
Debitum Flow withdrawals
Debitum Flow lets you ask for your money back before maturity, and the issuer decides whether to pay. The Flow help page advertises up to €1,000 by the next business day and up to €5,000 a week, with no exit fee, paid in the order requests arrive. Debitum’s answers on Flow add that the money comes from new Flow investments and “a dedicated liquidity buffer provided by the financing partner”. Both issuers’ base prospectuses state that an early-redemption request “is only a proposal and is not binding on the Issuer”, which may accept or refuse it at its sole discretion with no reasons owed. Baltic Terra’s terms give the issuer 60 business days to decide and 30 more to pay, LFDF II’s give it 180 business days, and LFDF II’s prospectus lets the issuer set “maximum caps, thresholds” and other criteria.
The next-day queue, the weekly limit and the liquidity buffer appear in neither the final terms nor the base prospectuses, and Debitum’s documents page lists no Flow terms. Only the buffer’s source is published, not its size. The same answers say your investment “may remain invested until maturity”. Read as a contract rather than a product page, Flow is five-year money funding the book’s two youngest issuers, with an early exit that depends on new Flow money and a buffer whose size isn’t published.
Closing your account
You can close your Debitum account by e-mail, with a selfie holding your ID, once you hold no investments and have withdrawn your balance. The help centre says you can’t close the account yourself, and the agreement lets you end it only while you own no securities, with Debitum starting to pay out your money within 3 business days. The platform can also close an account itself after 24 months without asset-backed securities and keep the balance, as set out under fees.
What fees does Debitum charge?
Debitum charges investors no fee to deposit by bank transfer, invest or withdraw. The one other charge sits in the agreement rather than the price list. After 24 months without asset-backed securities, Debitum may close your account and keep its balance.
Debitum fees and costs | Deposit fee | Free by SEPA transfer or internet banking |
| Investment fee | Free |
| Early exit fee | No secondary market held to maturity · Debitum Flow takes early-redemption requests the issuer may refuse, with no exit fee |
| Withdrawal fee | Free |
| Currency conversion | Not verified |
| Inactivity fee | Free per the price list · after 24 months without asset-backed securities, the terms allow closing the account and charging the remaining balance |
| Withholding tax | 0–25.5% EU/EEA residents 5%, no certificate · LT 0% with certificate · LV 25.5% · non-EEA 25.5%, or the treaty rate with a certificate |
Outside the table, the prospectuses pay recovery costs and the collateral agent’s expenses before your principal when an issuer fails, and investors repay the cost of a debt collector, as set out under Conflicts of interest.
If you hold no asset-backed securities for more than 24 consecutive months, the agreement lets Debitum close your account without prior notice and charge the remaining balance as an account closure fee. The clause counts only asset-backed securities, which the agreement defines apart from the notes it calls bonds, so an account holding only notes, Debitum Flow included, meets its condition after 24 months. The same clause sets a monthly account fee from the sixth month at the price list’s amount, now zero, and Debitum may change the price list at any time. Holding an asset-backed security at least once every 24 months, or emptying the account before leaving it, keeps the clause from reaching your money.
Pros and cons
What Debitum does well
- Your cash and notes on Debitum stay yours if Debitum itself fails. The agreement keeps uninvested cash off Debitum's balance sheet, and the notes are debts of the issuers, not of Debitum. Latvia's compensation scheme pays up to €20,000 of what Debitum can't return.
- Debitum publishes how much of the money each issuer and loan originator holds. Its public statistics give each company's funded and outstanding amounts, every note page I opened linked its prospectus and final terms, and LFDF's audited 2025 accounts are public.
- Debitum charges investors no fee to deposit by bank transfer, invest or withdraw. Its price list makes every investor fee free of charge, and EU and EEA residents pay 5% Latvian withholding tax on interest instead of the default 25.5%.
Where Debitum disappoints
- Two-thirds of the money on Debitum funds one forest fund and its sister fund. On 19 October 2026, LFDF and LFDF II held 66% of the €75 million outstanding, by Debitum's own statistics. Sandbox Funding, a loan originator Debitum says its own CEO owns, held another 10.9%.
- The pledge behind Debitum's forest notes leaves out the land the money buys. LFDF II's and Baltic Terra's prospectuses exclude the land from the collateral, and Debitum's own rating of LFDF says its collateral doesn't include real estate.
- An early withdrawal from Debitum Flow needs the issuer's consent. Flow sells five-year notes of two forest and land companies with the option to ask for your money back early. Their prospectuses let the issuer refuse that request without giving reasons and take up to 60 or 180 business days to decide. Without that consent, Flow money stays invested until maturity, up to five years.
- Debitum's statistics show no late payments by counting a frozen book as current. Chain Finance's Ukrainian book, frozen since 2022, sits with Debitum's subsidiary DN Funding Alpha, where €2.3 million, 90% of the amount funded, was still outstanding in October 2026.
- Debitum's agreement lets it keep the balance of an account left without asset-backed securities for 24 months. After that, Debitum may close the account without notice and charge whatever is left in it as a closure fee.
Who should use Debitum?
Debitum suits investors who want a small, speculative position in Latvian forest companies and read each note’s prospectus before they buy.
Debitum suits:
- A small position you can afford to lose in full, sized as one bet on one forest business
- Investors who can hold notes of 9 to 36 months to maturity, and Flow money for up to five years
- Investors who read each note’s prospectus and final terms before buying, and prefer Senior series over Junior ones
- Investors who want double-digit rates with no platform fees and 5% withholding tax in the EU and EEA
Avoid Debitum if you are:
- Counting on spreading your money across independent companies, because three of the six companies Debitum lists are the forest fund, its sister fund and a loan originator Debitum says its CEO owns
- Relying on collateral that includes the land your money buys
- Likely to need your money before maturity, because the only early exit is a Flow withdrawal the issuer may refuse
- Planning to hold only notes or idle cash for two years, because the agreement lets Debitum keep the balance after 24 months without asset-backed securities
