What is Hive5?
Hive5 is a P2P lending marketplace registered in Zagreb, Croatia, and operating since 2022. Investors contract with Hive5 marketplace d.o.o., which is wholly owned by Hive Finance UAB, a Lithuanian holding company whose lending companies in Poland and Spain, and by Hive5’s own account in Romania, issue the loans on the platform.
The companies whose loans you buy, the companies that promise to buy back late loans and the platform that brokers the deal all belong to Hive Finance’s group, by Hive5’s own account. Hive5 isn’t an independent marketplace matching investors with outside loan originators. It’s a group funding itself through its own storefront.
How does Hive5 work?
Hive5 is a marketplace for claims on loans, which you buy from the loan originator under a three-party investment agreement with Hive5. The agreements call the originator the Lender or the Assignor, and Hive5 signs them as the originator’s representative.
The originator collects the borrower’s repayments and passes your share through Hive5 to your account, and it owes you a payment only once the borrower has actually paid. Every loan carries a buyback obligation under which the originator buys your claim back once its loan is more than 60 days late.
Investors pay Hive5 nothing, and no published report shows what the originators pay it under cooperation agreements that aren’t public.
What you can invest in
Hive5 offers one kind of investment, claims on loans, from €10. On 17 August 2026 every one of the 2,022 loans on offer was a business loan, from Firmeo, which lends to Polish small businesses, or from Credilink, a Romanian consumer lender borrowing for its own operations. Hive5’s home page says Credilink’s investments “are linked to business financing provided to Credilink”, and the Credilink loan page I opened that day described its business loans as funding “before the company establishes a significant volume of personal loans”. The market’s filters also list FinJet’s consumer and business loans from Spain and loans to Linqo, a Lithuanian telematics company, though none of them had a loan on offer that day. What you own is the right to a loan’s repayments, assigned to you without collateral and with no priority over the borrower’s other creditors.
What return can you expect on Hive5?
Hive5’s home page advertises an average interest rate of 14.4%, and the median Hive5 investor on P2P Dash has earned 13.9% a year including cashback, across 144 portfolios, as of November 2026. Hive5’s 14.4% holds so far, while its group keeps buying back the loans that fall behind, which Hive5 says it has done from the first day of a delay.
Hive5 takes no fee and withholds no tax. The 2,022 loans open on Hive5 in August 2026 offered 13.5–16% a year. Hive5’s loyalty programme adds 0.5% to 1.5% for portfolios from €5,000 once you’ve been a Hive5 investor for more than 90 days. Credilink’s 2-year business loans offered the top rate of 16%, and Firmeo’s loans 13.5–15.5%.
Under Hive5’s user agreement, the rate you get is set separately from the rate the borrower pays, and Hive5 says a company of its group sold and backs every loan on offer. The rate prices that group’s promise to pay you, not a range of different borrowers’ risks.
Hive5 has the third-highest Returns score of the 21 platforms I’ve reviewed, 4.8 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 Hive5 safe? covers.
Is Hive5 safe?
Hive5 protects your money against a late borrower but not against a failure of its own group, which on every loan is where both your repayments and your buyback come from. No regulator or compensation scheme stands behind Hive5. The buyback is owed by the group’s lending companies, which on Hive5’s August 2026 market were Firmeo and We Finance IFN, and neither is in the group’s audited accounts. The audited group itself had negative equity of €1.28 million at the end of 2024 and a going-concern warning from its auditor. Hive5 publishes no default or loss statistic as of October 2026. The risk in the assets you hold remains fully yours.
Hive5 is tied for the third-lowest Safety score of the 21 platforms I’ve reviewed, 1.2 out of 5. The score rests mostly on how Hive5 is built, with no licence, your cash kept apart from Hive5’s money only by contract, a buyback owed by group companies outside the audited accounts and a group with negative equity, and partly on a record that no failure has yet tested. A “group guarantee” that Hive5 lists for every loan originator and no contract gives you also counts against it.
Is Hive5 regulated?
No, Hive5 isn’t regulated by any financial supervisor. Hive5 marketplace d.o.o., the Croatian company you contract with, holds no financial services licence, and Hive5’s help centre says so itself. That position rests on a Croatian law firm’s opinion of 23 January 2024 that Hive5 needs no licence from the Croatian authorities, and Hive5 doesn’t consider itself to need authorisation as a crowdfunding provider, investment firm, payment institution or e-money institution. That may be legally correct. It also means the only oversight of this structure is the structure itself.
Croatia’s central bank and its financial services supervisor warned in July 2024 that online platforms selling claims on loans are supervised by neither of them. Latvijas Banka, Latvia’s central bank and financial supervisor, lists “Hive5 marketplace d.o.o.” among companies providing financial services that require a licence without one, in a warning updated on 21 September 2026, and says money invested with these companies isn’t protected under Latvia’s investor protection law.
Hive5’s user agreement has users outside Croatia confirm that they came to Hive5 on their own initiative and that Hive5 didn’t actively offer its services, although Hive5 runs an international affiliate programme.
The one supervised company among Hive5’s loan originators is We Finance IFN S.A., which Hive5 names as the company behind Credilink and which is registered with the National Bank of Romania as a non-bank lender. That registration covers its lending in Romania, not Hive5 or your money on it.
What happens if Hive5 fails?
Your claims on Hive5 stay yours if Hive5 itself fails, because Hive5’s user agreement keeps your investment agreements with the loan originators in effect if the platform becomes insolvent. The platform would then stop selling new loans and return the cash on users’ accounts “unless not allowed by applicable laws”.
Your uninvested cash on Hive5 is less safe than your claims. The user agreement keeps it “separately from the PLATFORM’s funds”, but in an account in Hive5’s own name at Verified Payments UAB, a Lithuanian e-money institution whose terms make the money in an account the property of the client who holds it, here Hive5. Hive5’s own legal statement calls the separation “an operational, accounting and risk-management segregation control, not a statutory payment-institution safeguarding scheme”. If Hive5 failed, your cash would rest on Croatian contract law and the agreement’s own promise to return it.
The same agreement caps what Hive5 owes you for its own wrongdoing at the cash on your account, and lets Hive5 move users’ money “to a different company” if another company takes over its services.
The company that runs Hive5 is small and made a loss in 2025. That year Hive5 marketplace d.o.o. reported revenue of €704,661, a loss of €22,921 and negative equity of €60,282, with no employees, per the Croatian register.
Loan originators
Hive5 lists three loan originators in October 2026, Firmeo in Poland, Credilink in Romania and FinJet in Spain, and its transparency page lists all three among the group’s own lending businesses.
On 17 August 2026 the primary market listed 2,022 loans, every one of them a business loan. About 1,350–1,400 came from Firmeo and 650–700 from Credilink, at 13.5–16% a year, and filtered by type, personal and buy-now-pay-later loans showed none. Investors’ automated strategies may buy consumer loans the moment they list, but either way a manual investor that day could buy group business loans or nothing. The 2,022 listings were slices of two group companies’ lending, so buying many of them spread your money across tranches, not across risks.
Firmeo, which owed the buyback on two-thirds of that market, was registered in August 2025 with PLN 5,000 of share capital, the legal minimum, and Hive Finance owns all of Firmeo, per the Polish register. Firmeo’s only filed accounts, for its first months to the end of 2025, show no revenue, no loans yet and negative equity of PLN 341,496, with its costs paid by loans from related companies. In August 2026 Firmeo’s sole shareholder took the vote Polish company law requires once losses exceed half the share capital, and resolved that Firmeo continues and covers the loss from future profits, with no new capital. Hive5 says Firmeo’s lending passed PLN 1 million a month in April 2026.
We Finance IFN S.A., which Hive5’s loan-originator page names as the company behind Credilink, sits outside the group’s audited accounts, and no public register I could read shows who owns it. The same page calls Credilink “part of the broader Hive Finance” group. We Finance’s latest public accounts, for 2024 and filed under its former name B2Kapital Finance, show revenue of RON 549,000, a loss of RON 315,425 and nothing on the balance-sheet line where a lender’s loans normally sit, per Romania’s tax authority. Neither company that owed the buyback on the August market had a loan book in its last filed accounts, so no published accounts yet show how the loans behind your buyback perform.
Hive Finance published its audited 2024 group accounts in April 2026. They cover Hive5, FinJet’s company Nectar Capital and the group’s Polish consumer lender Argentum Capital, but not Firmeo or We Finance. Revenue more than tripled to €11.5 million and the year closed with a profit of €63,000 after a 2023 loss, but equity was negative by €1.28 million, and the auditor added a going-concern warning. The backstop the notes describe is a shareholder loan plus the shareholders investing through Hive5 itself, up to a tenth of what the group owes investors. The group’s own report calls its €11.43 million of borrowing “largely short-dated P2P”, so at the end of 2024 investors on Hive5 were the group’s main lenders as well as the people its buyback protects.
Argentum Capital, which trades as Ekspres Pożyczka, grew its revenue to about €17 million in 2025, per its filings in the Polish register, and Poland was the group’s main source of profit in 2024. Argentum had no loans on Hive5’s market on 17 August 2026, and Hive5’s loan-originator page doesn’t list it. The group’s most substantial lending company is the one whose loans you can’t buy.
Since March 2026, Hive5 has also listed a 24-month loan at a fixed 10% to Linqo, a telematics company in the Ruptela group, which holds 35% of Hive Finance. The loan is issued by Hive Finance UAB, the group’s holding company, which also owes its buyback. The group lends to its shareholder’s telematics firm, sells you the claim and owes the buyback itself.
Buyback obligation
Hive5’s buyback obligation protects you only as long as the loan originator that owes it can pay. Under Hive5’s user agreement and investment agreement, the originator buys your claim back once a payment is more than 60 days late or the borrower’s insolvency proceedings begin, and an extension of the loan’s term counts as a delay. The buyback pays the principal still owed plus interest for no more than 60 days of the delay. No collateral or fund stands behind it, and Hive5’s own home page says the buyback “is not a guarantee and depends on the lender’s ability to fulfil it”. The promise is worth what the company making it is worth, and on the August 2026 market those companies were Firmeo and We Finance.
If a loan originator becomes insolvent, the investment agreement lets Hive5 take over managing your claims “but not the buyback obligation”, which stays with the insolvent originator. The buyback then becomes one more claim against a failed company.
Hive5’s loan-originator page shows “Group guarantee” as “Applies” under “Contractual obligations” for each of its three loan originators. The investment agreement names no guarantor, and the group’s audited 2024 accounts record no guarantees issued among its companies that year. A guarantee that Hive5 lists as a contractual obligation and none of your contracts contains counts against Hive5’s Safety score.
Defaults and recovery
Hive5 publishes no default, late-payment or buyback statistic as of October 2026. Hive5’s home page says instead that “loan originators have repurchased delayed claims from day one, rather than waiting for the 60-day buyback trigger”, and shows “No overdue investor claims to date”. I found no reported failure of a loan originator on Hive5 since it opened in 2022, so no failure has yet tested the buyback.
The group’s audited 2024 report puts that year’s defaults in its Polish consumer lending within a target range of about 4–6% and its loan-loss provisions at €3.9 million, on total assets of €12.0 million. Hive5’s record of no overdue claims describes what investors saw after the group bought delayed loans back, so it shows the group paying, not the borrowers.
Conflicts of interest
Hive5 has four conflicts of interest with its investors, set out in its agreements and its ownership.
- Hive5 can change its terms without asking you. The user agreement lets Hive5 amend it and its price list by posting the change 30 days ahead, or without notice for changes in your favour, new features, technical corrections and legal compliance. Objecting means closing your account, which you can do only once you hold no claims. The agreement in force since 28 September 2026 added a secondary-market regime of 24 clauses, and my account still lists only the version I accepted in May 2023.
- Hive5 acts for the loan originator, not for you. Hive5 signs your investment agreement “as the representative of the Assignor”, under a cooperation agreement with each originator that isn’t public, and no published report shows what the group pays Hive5 for it.
- Hive5’s owner also owns its loan originators, by Hive5’s own account. The company that decides which loans go on offer belongs to the same group as the companies that issue them and owe their buyback.
- Hive5’s user agreement bars you from promoting other platforms. Promoting “other identical or similar platforms or other financing sources” is a prohibited action that can get your account closed.
How do you use Hive5?
You use Hive5 in four steps, from signing up to choosing how your money is invested.
- Sign up with your email address and set your own password.
- Verify your identity, which Hive5 requires before your money can be invested.
- Add euros by SEPA bank transfer from a personal account in your own name.
- Choose how your money is invested, by hand on the primary or secondary market or with an automated strategy.
Hive5 is tied for the fifth-highest Usability score of the 21 platforms I’ve reviewed, 3.5 out of 5. The score rests on Hive5’s automated strategies, which filter loans by loan originator, term, rate and amount, and on the income statement you can download for your tax return. No setting lets you cap how much goes to any one loan originator, and that counts against it.
Opening an account
Hive5 verifies your identity after you sign up. I registered on 22 May 2023 at 07:38, with a temporary password sent by email, and Hive5 confirmed my verification at 09:38 the same morning, two hours later.
Deposits
Depositing on Hive5 is free and works only by SEPA bank transfer in euros. The transfer has to come from a personal bank account in your name, and Hive5 may take up to two business days after it arrives to verify where the money came from. When I opened the deposit page on 17 August 2026, without depositing, the page named Hive5 marketplace d.o.o.’s account at Verified Payments UAB in Lithuania as the receiver, the account that holds your cash.
Auto-invest
Hive5 has one kind of auto-invest, which it calls automated strategies. A strategy sets a portfolio size, an amount per loan, the loan originators to include, a range of terms and rates, and whether repayments are reinvested, and you can run several at once. I looked through the form on 17 August 2026 without setting up a strategy. The form has no setting for how much goes to any one loan originator, and every originator on its list belongs to the same group, so spreading your money across them still leaves all of it with that group.
Tax reports
Hive5 gives you a tax report for your tax return, which Hive5 calls an income statement. You generate it for any period under Tax report in your account settings, and the one I downloaded on 20 October 2026 showed zero interest income for my unfunded account and is valid without a signature. The account statement adds a date range, a filter by payment type and an Excel export.
Support
Hive5 offers support by email at support@hive5.com, which no support contact of mine has tested. Its help centre asks you to write from your registered address and says Hive5 replies within two business days.
How fast can you get your money out of Hive5?
You can withdraw cash from Hive5 for free within 2 working days. Invested money comes out as the loans repay, or earlier when another investor buys your whole position on the secondary market, as long as no repayment on it is overdue and Hive5 hasn’t suspended the market. A claim on a loan that has fallen behind waits for the buyback, which depends on the loan originator paying.
Hive5 is tied for the seventh-lowest Liquidity score of the 21 platforms I’ve reviewed, 2.5 out of 5. The score rests on Hive5’s published terms, since my account has held no money, with free withdrawals and a fee-free secondary market weighed against a market that closes for loans in trouble, can be suspended without notice and has run only since September 2026.
Withdrawals
Hive5 withdrawals are free and take up to 2 working days. My account has never held money to withdraw, so that is Hive5’s stated time, not one I’ve measured. A withdrawal goes only to a personal account that has sent Hive5 at least one deposit, and Hive5 says a SEPA transfer usually arrives within one business day.
Secondary market
The Hive5 secondary market is where you sell your claims to other Hive5 investors before they mature, with no fee for the buyer or the seller. The market opened on 29 September 2026. You sell your whole position at once, at the principal still owed or at a discount of up to 50%, never above it, and buyers pick listings by hand, with no automatic buying.
A position can’t be listed once a repayment is overdue, the buyback has been triggered or the borrower or the loan originator is in insolvency proceedings, and Hive5 may suspend the whole market at any time without notice. Interest goes to whoever holds the claim when a payment arrives, so a seller at par gives up the interest built up since the last payment. The secondary market is closed to exactly the loans in trouble.
When I looked on 20 October 2026, the market held about three pages of listings. The first page held only business loans from Firmeo, Credilink and Linqo, with 10 to 21 months left to run, almost all offered at par.
Closing your account
You can close your Hive5 account at any time once you hold no claims and owe nothing on the platform, and Hive5 then pays out your cash within 5 business days. With money in loans, that means first selling every position on the secondary market or waiting for the loans to repay. The user agreement also lets Hive5 end it without notice on suspicion of a breach of its rules, and Hive5 then returns the value of your claims with interest to your bank account.
What fees does Hive5 charge?
Hive5 charges no fee to deposit by SEPA transfer, invest, sell on its secondary market, withdraw or keep your account.
Hive5 fees and costs | Deposit fee | Free by SEPA bank transfer in EUR · SWIFT not accepted |
| Investment fee | Free |
| Early exit fee | Free sell whole positions on the secondary market since 29 September 2026, at par or up to 50% below, to investors who buy manually · overdue loans can't be listed |
| Withdrawal fee | Free |
| Currency conversion | EUR-only platform |
| Inactivity fee | Free |
| Withholding tax | 0% the platform withholds nothing, you declare the interest yourself |
The investment agreement also lets Hive5 withhold a service fee and lets the loan originator charge you a recovery commission, each “pursuant to the Price List”, and Hive5’s published fees include neither as of October 2026. Fees live in a price list that the user agreement lets Hive5 change on its own, so “free” is a current fact, not a promise.
Pros and cons
What Hive5 does well
- Your claims on Hive5 stay in force if Hive5 itself fails. Hive5's user agreement keeps your investment agreements with the loan originators in effect if the platform becomes insolvent. Cash waiting on your account is kept apart from Hive5's own money only by contract.
- Hive5's buyback triggers on a delay of more than 60 days, a borrower's insolvency or a term extension. The loan originator that sold you the claim owes it, at the principal still owed plus up to 60 days of interest.
- Hive5 charges investors no fees. Depositing by SEPA transfer, investing, selling on the secondary market and withdrawing are free under Hive5's published terms as of October 2026.
Where Hive5 disappoints
- The companies behind the buyback on Hive5's August 2026 market sit outside its group's audited accounts. Firmeo and We Finance IFN, the company Hive5 names behind Credilink, owed the buyback on every loan on offer on 17 August 2026. Firmeo was set up in 2025 with PLN 5,000 of share capital and closed its first accounts before making a single loan.
- Hive Finance, the group behind every loan on Hive5, had negative equity of €1.28 million at the end of 2024. Its auditor added a going-concern warning to the 2024 accounts. The group's own report describes its €11.43 million of borrowing as "largely short-dated P2P".
- Hive5 holds no financial licence, so no supervisor checks it and no scheme compensates you. Hive5's own pages say investments made through it aren't covered by any deposit guarantee or investor compensation scheme.
- Hive5's loan-originator page lists a "group guarantee" that none of your contracts gives you. The page shows it under "Contractual obligations" for every loan originator, and Hive5's investment agreement names no guarantor.
- Hive5's secondary market won't take a loan that has fallen behind. Since 29 September 2026 you can sell whole positions to investors who buy by hand, at par or below, but only while every repayment is on time. The platform can also switch the market off without notice.
Who should use Hive5?
Hive5 suits only investors who put in money they can afford to lose in full and accept that all of it is lent to one group.
Hive5 suits:
- A small position you can afford to lose in full
- Investors who accept that every loan comes from one lending group and size their position for that
- Investors who plan to hold each loan to maturity, with a fee-free secondary market as a fallback while the loan keeps paying
Avoid Hive5 if you are:
- Relying on the buyback to protect your capital, because the companies that owed it on Hive5’s August 2026 market sit outside the group’s audited accounts
- Looking for a regulator or a compensation scheme behind your money, because Hive5 has neither
- Expecting a marketplace’s spread of independent loan originators, because every loan on Hive5 comes from one group
- Counting on selling a loan that has fallen behind, because Hive5’s secondary market won’t list it
