What is VIAINVEST?
VIAINVEST is the investment platform of the VIA SMS Group, a Latvian consumer-lending group, based in Riga and operating since 2016. What you buy on it are notes, securities with their own ISIN codes, each backed by consumer loans that a company of the group made. At the end of 2025 the platform held €62.9 million of investors’ cash and investments, per its audited annual report.
When I opened my account in January 2026, auto-invest put my deposit to work within about two weeks, and VIAINVEST published a statistics page. By October the statistics page had gone, and my strategy had once waited 55 days for a note to buy.
How does VIAINVEST work?
VIAINVEST sells notes that turn loans made by the group’s loan originators into securities, issued by SIA VIAINVEST Assets, a company of the same group. The issuer buys part of each loan from the loan originator with the money investors pay, and the loan originator keeps the loans on its own books. Your credit risk therefore sits with the loan originator rather than with its borrowers, per the base prospectus.
A VIAINVEST note pays interest every month, but only once the borrowers’ repayments have travelled from the loan originator to the issuer and on to your account. A repayment on its way to you shows in your VIAINVEST account as “payments in process”, neither invested nor available to withdraw.
In my VIAINVEST account a repayment spent a median of 3.6 days in payments in process, across the 203 repayments my statement records to 21 October 2026. Repayments from mid-August waited up to 35 days, and 13 of the 203 took more than 30. A month’s wait on a 3-month note is a third as long as the note itself, with no interest for that month.
Every note on offer carried a buyback obligation in October 2026, per VIAINVEST’s auto-invest page, under which the loan originator buys back any loan more than 60 days late.
VIAINVEST earns its income from the group companies whose notes it sells, not from fees charged to investors.
What you can invest in
VIAINVEST offers one kind of investment, notes backed by consumer loans, from €50. Each note comes from one of four programmes, one for each loan originator, and pays a fixed rate, which on 19 August 2026 depended only on its term. That day, notes of 3 months from SIA VIA SMS paid 9%, notes of 6 months from Viaconto Sweden 10% and notes of 9 months from SIA VIA SMS 11%.
Every note on VIAINVEST is issued by the group’s own company, SIA VIAINVEST Assets, so it pays only what the loan originator behind it pays. You can open a note’s base prospectus, key information document and final terms before you buy it, and the final terms list the loans behind it. A 9% note I bought in August 2026 held ten loans of €33 to €1,000 to borrowers aged 26 to 64, who paid about 53.5% a year on them.
What return can you expect on VIAINVEST?
While VIAINVEST’s homepage advertises returns of up to 13% a year, my own VIAINVEST account earned about 8.1% a year after the 5% withholding tax, from January to October 2026. With the €8.75 welcome bonus, my account earned 9.3%. VIAINVEST itself publishes no figure for the return its investors got.
VIAINVEST’s rates hold, because every note I bought paid the coupon on its label, and three things took my own return below the 13%:
- My limit of 3 months on each note. I bought only notes of 3 months or less, because no VIAINVEST note can be sold before it matures, and a short note is the quickest way back to cash. Those notes paid 9% in August 2026, against 11% for notes of 9 months.
- The 5% tax VIAINVEST withholds, €3.16 of the €60.99 of interest my notes paid in 172 payments, about half a point a year.
- Cash waiting between notes. My strategy bought no note for 55 days between May and July 2026, and €315, about 30% of the account, sat idle at the end of June. VIAINVEST’s help centre warns that a short maximum term can miss notes “because they are fully funded within the first days”. That idle time, the days repayments waited in payments in process and the accrued interest my 8.1% leaves out sit inside the gap to the 8.55% a 9% coupon leaves after tax.
VIAINVEST is tied for the seventh-highest Returns score of the 21 platforms I’ve reviewed, 4.1 out of 5. The score rests on what investors kept last year and this year, not on my own account and not on the risk of losing money, which Is VIAINVEST safe? covers.
Returns projection
What might you earn on VIAINVEST?
3-month notes, August 2026 (9%)
€1,539
9-month notes, August 2026 (11%)
€1,685
My XIRR after tax, without the bonus, Jan–Oct 2026 (8.1%)
€1,476
Constant annual compounding. The 9% and 11% are rates on offer on 19 August 2026, before the 5% tax withheld at source, and my 8.1% is after it and leaves out the one-off welcome bonus. No note can be sold before it matures, and any investment in notes can lose value.
Is VIAINVEST safe?
VIAINVEST protects your money against its own failure but not against its loan originators’ failures, and every note I bought depended on one of them, SIA VIA SMS. As a licensed investment brokerage firm supervised by Latvijas Banka, VIAINVEST keeps your notes and cash apart from its own assets, with up to €20,000 from the investor compensation scheme if it can’t return them. Its four loan originators belong to one group by VIAINVEST’s own account, and SIA VIA SMS owns the Swedish and Czech ones. VIAINVEST publishes no buyback or loss statistic as of October 2026. The risk in the assets you hold remains fully yours.
VIAINVEST is tied for the third-highest Safety score of the 21 platforms I’ve reviewed, 3.3 out of 5. The score rests mostly on how VIAINVEST is built, with a licence, notes and cash held apart from its own assets and loan originators that keep 5% of every loan, weighed against loan originators that VIAINVEST’s own disclosures place in one group, and partly on a record in which I found no reported loss on its notes.
Is VIAINVEST regulated?
Yes, VIAINVEST is regulated as an investment brokerage firm in Latvia. SIA Viainvest has held its licence since 28 September 2021, when Latvia’s Financial and Capital Market Commission granted it, and Latvijas Banka has supervised it since taking over that commission in 2023, under licence number 27-55/2023/2, per the Latvian register. VIAINVEST 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 Financial and Capital Market Commission sanctioned VIAINVEST in October 2022 for two sets of breaches, per its announcement. The commission issued a warning because VIAINVEST hadn’t completed on time the move its licence required, from selling loan claims under assignment agreements to selling only securities. The commission’s €21,277.58 fine was for breaches of anti-money-laundering and sanctions-risk rules.
The key information document of a Latvian VIAINVEST note rates it 5 out of 7, a medium-high risk class, and its table of four scenarios shows the same 12.35% return in each, the stress scenario included, above the 9% my notes paid. The licence doesn’t make the notes low-risk.
What happens if VIAINVEST fails?
Your notes and uninvested cash on VIAINVEST stay yours if VIAINVEST itself fails, because its agreement keeps them apart from its own assets and bars using your notes to pay its debts in an insolvency. The investor compensation scheme pays the full amount VIAINVEST can’t return, up to €20,000, once Latvijas Banka or a court confirms that it can’t meet its obligations. The scheme doesn’t compensate “the default of a borrower, lending company, or issuer”, per VIAINVEST’s portfolio management policy.
VIAINVEST is also the paying agent that passes the issuer’s payments on to you and keeps the register of who owns each note, and the base prospectus names no one to take over either role. A VIAINVEST failure would leave your notes yours and their payments waiting on an administrator.
Your uninvested cash on VIAINVEST sits in a client account at BluOr Bank in Latvia, and the agreement makes you waive any claim against VIAINVEST if that bank fails. VIAINVEST may also place uninvested cash in money market funds, where it stops counting as client money. For its own unlawful actions, its liability to you is capped at the cash in your account when the loss occurred.
SIA Viainvest made a profit of €228,361 in 2025, down from €724,430 in 2024, and its equity was €2.2 million at the end of 2025, per its BDO-audited annual report.
Loan originators
VIAINVEST lists four loan originators in October 2026, the companies that made the loans behind your notes. They are SIA VIA SMS in Latvia, Viaconto Sweden, Via SMS s.r.o. in the Czech Republic and IFN Viaconto Minicredit in Romania, and VIAINVEST’s sustainability disclosure calls all four companies of the VIA SMS Group.
SIA VIA SMS, the Latvian loan originator, belongs to the group’s holding company, AS VIA SMS group, and itself owns Viaconto Sweden and Via SMS s.r.o., per the Swedish and Czech base prospectuses. Who owns the Romanian one is unclear. The group’s audited 2024 report says it sold its shares in IFN Viaconto Minicredit that year, while the Romanian base prospectus of May 2026 still calls it a group subsidiary. Romanian notes are built differently, because the issuer buys AS VIA SMS group’s own loans to IFN Viaconto Minicredit, so their credit risk sits with the holding company as well as the loan originator. Choosing the Swedish or Czech loan originator over the Latvian one moves your money to another loan book, not away from SIA VIA SMS.
Each VIAINVEST loan originator keeps at least 5% of every loan it sells into a note. Their own base prospectuses put the share of each loan book more than 90 days late at the end of 2025 at 1.3% for SIA VIA SMS, 22.1% for Viaconto Sweden, up from 15.7% a year earlier, 72.2% for Via SMS s.r.o. and 93.5% for IFN Viaconto Minicredit, figures that also reflect how quickly each sells its bad loans. My strategy, limited to notes of 3 months or less, bought notes only from SIA VIA SMS’s book.
VIAINVEST’s invest page said on 19 October 2026 that each note is “backed by multiple loans, enhancing diversification and helping to mitigate concentration risk”. Its base prospectus says that “the credit risk exposure of the Securityholders is towards the Loan Originator, not the individual Underlying Borrowers”. Twenty notes from one loan originator are one credit risk, not twenty.
The Czech National Bank fined Via SMS s.r.o. CZK 3 million in a decision that became final in March 2025, for granting loans without properly assessing whether borrowers could repay, in all 54 cases it sampled from 2018 and 2019. The Czech base prospectus of May 2026 doesn’t mention the fine. Sweden’s financial supervisor closed its own investigation of Viaconto Sweden’s credit assessments in June 2024 without findings.
SIA VIA SMS reported a profit of €2.6 million for 2025, with €8.4 million of equity on €61.3 million of assets, per its filing in the Latvian company register.
Buyback obligation
VIAINVEST’s buyback obligation protects you only as long as the loan originator behind your note can pay. VIAINVEST’s help centre puts it the same way, “If the loan originator is not able to honor its liability, the Buyback Obligation is also at risk.” When a loan is more than 60 days late, the loan originator must buy it back for its principal plus interest, and the note repays that part of your money on its next monthly payment date, once the money has reached the issuer. The prospectus has no clause that lets the loan originator push the 60 days back, and the loan originator also pledges the loans behind each note to the issuer to secure the notes.
VIAINVEST publishes no figure for how much money its buyback has repaid, and none of my notes has needed it.
AS VIA SMS group, the holding company, guarantees the loan originators’ obligations, but to VIAINVEST, not to you. Each note’s final terms say the guarantor “is not guaranteeing the Loan Originator’s obligations towards the Investors”, and no public document settles whether the guarantee covers the buyback obligation. The guarantor’s own equity was €2.9 million at the end of 2025, against €58.4 million of notes outstanding, per its and the issuer’s audited accounts. Behind your buyback stand the loan originator and, one step removed, a guarantee you can’t enforce from a holding company whose equity was about a twentieth of the notes.
AS VIA SMS group declared €3.5 million of extraordinary dividends to its owners in 2025, the year it put €800,000 into VIAINVEST, per its audited 2025 accounts. Its own consolidated accounts stopped after 2023, and the group’s consolidated figures now sit one level up, in the filings of its majority owner.
Defaults and recovery
No loan originator behind my VIAINVEST notes has failed, and none of my 72 notes needed a buyback in nine months, so my account hasn’t tested what happens to a VIAINVEST note in default.
VIAINVEST publishes no buyback or loss statistic as of October 2026, and the audited reports of SIA VIAINVEST Assets, the issuer of every note, don’t disclose defaults, buybacks or losses either. The statistics page VIAINVEST still ran in February 2026 redirected to the homepage by October 2026, and the platform’s investor-relations page says live statistics are “coming soon”.
VIAINVEST’s quarterly posts on its loan originators give late-loan amounts that their base prospectuses don’t match. For the end of 2025, the post put Viaconto Sweden’s “NPL 90+ days” at €1.59 million, and Viaconto Sweden’s base prospectus put its loans more than 90 days late at €5.25 million on the same date. The figure in the prospectus Latvijas Banka approved is more than three times the one VIAINVEST posts.
VIAINVEST’s own posts describe three wind-downs, of the Polish loan originator VIA SMS PL, which stopped lending in 2023 with 3.5% of the platform’s portfolio, and of the loans from the group’s joint venture with TWINO in the Philippines in 2023 and in Vietnam in 2024. I found no reported loss to VIAINVEST investors from any of them.
Conflicts of interest
VIAINVEST has five conflicts of interest with its investors, set out in its terms, its prospectuses and its ownership.
- VIAINVEST can change its terms and prices by publishing them. You have 30 days to object, silence counts as acceptance, and changes made for regulatory reasons or for new services skip even that window. The agreement doesn’t say what happens if you object, and you can close your account only once your last note has matured.
- VIAINVEST is paid before you from the money the loans bring in. The base prospectus pays the issuer’s taxes and then the fees the loan originator owes VIAINVEST before servicing costs, recovery costs and, last, your interest, principal and buyback price.
- VIAINVEST keeps the yield on your idle cash. When it places uninvested cash in money market funds, the interest goes to VIAINVEST, not to you.
- VIAINVEST is paid by the group whose notes it sells. The group’s loan originators and issuer paid it €1.55 million of commission in 2025, about 2.9% a year on the €52.7 million of investors’ notes in its custody on average in the year to September 2025, by my arithmetic. Its conflict-of-interest policy says it “is interested in sales of securities” of the group “in order to increase commission income”.
- VIAINVEST, its issuer and SIA VIA SMS have the same beneficial owner. The same person controls the platform that picks and sells the notes and the loan originator behind every note I bought, per VIAINVEST’s base prospectus and the Latvian register.
How do you use VIAINVEST?
You use VIAINVEST in five steps, from signing up to choosing how your money is invested.
- Fill in the registration form with your personal details and confirm your email address.
- Verify your identity online.
- Complete VIAINVEST’s product suitability assessment.
- Add money by SEPA bank transfer in euros from an account in your own name.
- Choose how your money is invested, by hand, with your own auto-invest strategy or with one of VIAINVEST’s ready-made strategies.
VIAINVEST is tied for the fifth-highest Usability score of the 21 platforms I’ve reviewed, 3.5 out of 5. The score rests on VIAINVEST’s auto-invest, which filters notes by term, rate, loan originator and buyback, and on the tax report you download from the Statements page. The gaps on record are support by email only and no investor app.
Opening an account
VIAINVEST verifies your identity online as part of signing up. My registration on the evening of 29 January 2026 took 7 minutes 40 seconds, from the email asking me to confirm my address to the one saying my account was ready.
VIAINVEST’s product suitability assessment asks about your finances, investment knowledge, experience and goals. When VIAINVEST launched its ready-made strategies in 2023, it opened them only to investors who had completed the assessment.
Deposits
Depositing on VIAINVEST is free by SEPA bank transfer in euros, the only way to add money. In October 2026 the deposit page directed transfers to Viainvest SIA’s account at BluOr Bank in Latvia with your investor number, said they arrive within a few hours if your bank supports SEPA Instant and in 1–3 business days otherwise, and accepted them only from an account in your own name in the EEA. My one transfer was credited on 30 January 2026, the morning after I registered.
Auto-invest
VIAINVEST has two kinds of auto-invest, a strategy you set yourself and ready-made strategies, which VIAINVEST called Active and Diversified when it launched them in 2023.
| Way of investing | Who picks the notes | Limit per loan originator | Getting out before maturity |
|---|
| Your own strategy | You, by rules you set for term, rate, loan originator and buyback | None, though you can leave loan originators out | None, notes are held to maturity |
| Ready-made strategies | VIAINVEST, with Active buying the highest rates first and Diversified spreading across as many notes as possible | Not published | None, notes are held to maturity |
| Buying by hand | You, one note at a time | None beyond your own choices | None, notes are held to maturity |
Auto-invest on VIAINVEST is portfolio management under its licence, so VIAINVEST buys the notes on your behalf. About 82% of the investors’ notes in VIAINVEST’s custody sat in auto-invest on average in the year to September 2025, by my arithmetic from its audited accounts.
My own VIAINVEST strategy, as it stood on 19 August 2026, put up to €50 into each note, bought only notes with a buyback obligation and at most 3 months left to run, and left the rate and the loan originator open. If I can’t sell, the maturity date is my only exit, so I keep it close. Since February the account has run itself, with notes maturing and their money going into new ones.
Personal experience · What the term cap costs
My cap at 3 months has two prices, and I knew only one of them going in. The first is the rate, about 2 points a year below the 9-month notes. The second surprised me. Every one of the 72 notes my strategy bought came from SIA VIA SMS, though I never chose a loan originator. On VIAINVEST, the term filter doesn’t just pick your rate. It silently picks your loan originator too.
Tax reports
VIAINVEST provides a tax report on the Statements page of your account. The same page holds your account statement and quarterly reports on the portfolio management behind auto-invest, per VIAINVEST’s help centre. My full statement of 21 October 2026 lists every note bought and repaid, each interest payment and the tax withheld on it, and says that VIAINVEST doesn’t calculate the market value of your notes.
Support
VIAINVEST’s support runs by email, at info@viainvest.com, a channel no support contact of mine has tested. VIAINVEST publishes no support phone number, chat or hours. Complaints are accepted in Latvian or English, and VIAINVEST answers a consumer’s complaint in writing within 15 business days, per its complaints procedure.
How fast can you get your money out of VIAINVEST?
You can withdraw cash from VIAINVEST for free within 5 business days, from €50. VIAINVEST has no secondary market, so invested money comes out only as your notes mature, and a repayment then waits in payments in process before you can use it. Money with a loan originator that stops paying waits for the buyback or a recovery, which my account has never needed.
VIAINVEST is tied for the seventh-lowest Liquidity score of the 21 platforms I’ve reviewed, 2.5 out of 5. The score rests on VIAINVEST’s terms, free withdrawals within 5 business days against no way to sell a note before it matures, and on my account, where repayments from mid-August 2026 waited up to 35 days before I could use them.
Withdrawals
VIAINVEST withdrawals are free and take up to 5 business days, and no withdrawal of mine is on record yet. VIAINVEST pays a withdrawal only to the bank account you deposited from, and the smallest is €50, unless your whole balance is lower and none of it is invested. On 20 October 2026 my account had €4.55 available, because auto-invest had reinvested every repayment, so a withdrawal would first have meant pausing auto-invest until €50 built up.
Closing your account
You can close your VIAINVEST account with 30 days’ notice, by email or in your profile, once it holds no money and no investments, has no open transactions and owes VIAINVEST nothing. Closing is free, per the price list. VIAINVEST can also end the agreement and close your access itself after three months without money credited or a transaction on your account. No secondary market makes the maturity calendar the liquidity plan, and my notes of 3 months or less give me a rolling exit within about a quarter of stopping auto-invest, plus the weeks a repayment can wait in payments in process.
What fees does VIAINVEST charge?
VIAINVEST charges no fee to deposit by bank transfer, invest or withdraw. The inactivity fee is the only VIAINVEST fee charged on an account you leave unused. VIAINVEST is one of 6 of the 21 platforms I’ve reviewed that charge an inactivity fee, as of September 2026.
VIAINVEST fees and costs | Deposit fee | Free by SEPA bank transfer, the only deposit method |
| Investment fee | Free |
| Early exit fee | No secondary market notes held to maturity |
| Withdrawal fee | Free minimum withdrawal €50 |
| Currency conversion | EUR-only platform |
| Inactivity fee | €2/month after 3 months without active investments or transactions, until the balance reaches €0 |
| Withholding tax | 0–25.5% EU/EEA residents 5%, no certificate if resident in your citizenship country · LT 0% with certificate · LV 25.5% · applied to interest only |
VIAINVEST’s price list also charges €20 for a statement it prepares on request, and 2% of the amount, at least €30, to return a deposit it can’t credit because of wrong details, or the same each month while it holds one. Since 1 August 2026 the platform charges 2% a month of your available balance, at least €30, if you don’t provide the documents it asks for in its standard due-diligence checks.
My VIAINVEST statements show no fee from January to 21 October 2026, only my deposit, note purchases and repayments, interest, tax and one bonus.
On VIAINVEST the inactivity fee is €2 a month on an account with no active investments and no transactions in the past three months, until the balance reaches €0. Holding one note keeps the fee from starting, because it applies only to an account without active investments.
VIAINVEST is paid by its group, about 2.9% a year on investors’ notes in its custody, and the loan originator keeps the difference between what its borrowers pay and your coupon, per the base prospectus. The borrowers behind my August note paid about 53.5% a year against my 9%. That gap pays for the loan originator’s defaults, its collection and its profit, and for VIAINVEST’s commission, so the cost of using VIAINVEST sits in your coupon rather than in its price list.
Pros and cons
What VIAINVEST does well
- Your notes and cash on VIAINVEST stay yours if VIAINVEST itself fails. VIAINVEST, a licensed Latvian investment brokerage firm, keeps them apart from its own assets. The investor compensation scheme pays up to €20,000 of what it can't return.
- The interest on my VIAINVEST notes arrived as promised. My statement to 21 October 2026 shows €60.99 of interest in 172 payments, and none of my 72 notes needed a buyback.
- VIAINVEST charges no fee to deposit by bank transfer, invest or withdraw. My statements from January to 21 October 2026 list no charge beyond the tax withheld on interest.
- A loan behind a VIAINVEST note must be bought back once it is more than 60 days late. The loan originator then pays the loan's principal plus interest, and the prospectus has no clause that lets it push the deadline back.
- VIAINVEST shows each note's prospectus, key information document and final terms before you buy. The final terms of a 9% note I bought in August 2026 listed each of its ten loans, from €33 to €1,000, with the borrower's age.
Where VIAINVEST disappoints
- VIAINVEST's investor protection covers VIAINVEST failing, not a loan originator. VIAINVEST's own disclosures place all four of its loan originators in one group, the VIA SMS Group, and the group's guarantee of their obligations runs to VIAINVEST, not to you.
- VIAINVEST notes can't be sold before they mature. If you might need the money, your only tool is buying shorter terms at lower rates.
- Two of VIAINVEST's four loan originators had most of their loan books over 90 days late at the end of 2025. Via SMS s.r.o. in the Czech Republic stood at 72.2% and IFN Viaconto Minicredit in Romania at 93.5%, per their own prospectuses. Viaconto Sweden, whose notes paid 10% for 6 months in August 2026, rose from 15.7% to 22.1% in 2025.
- Money on VIAINVEST can wait weeks without earning. Between 17 May and 12 July 2026 my strategy bought no note, and about 30% of my account sat idle at the end of June. Repayments from mid-August took up to 35 days to become available again.
- VIAINVEST publishes no buyback or loss statistic. VIAINVEST's statistics page was gone by October 2026. The platform's quarterly posts put Viaconto Sweden's "NPL 90+ days" at the end of 2025 at less than a third of the amount more than 90 days late in Viaconto Sweden's prospectus.
Who should use VIAINVEST?
VIAINVEST suits investors who hold regulated notes to maturity and size their position for one lending group’s risk.
VIAINVEST suits:
- Investors who want a licensed platform where their notes and cash stay theirs if the platform fails
- Investors who can hold each note to maturity and use short notes as their way out
- Investors who want to pay no fee to deposit, invest or withdraw
- Investors who read a note’s prospectus and final terms before they buy
- Investors who size their position for the risk of one lending group
Avoid VIAINVEST if you are:
- Relying on the investor protection for your capital, because it covers VIAINVEST failing, not a loan originator, and VIAINVEST’s own disclosures place all four loan originators in one group
- Needing your money back before your notes mature, because no VIAINVEST note can be sold early
- Looking to spread your money across unrelated companies, because the Latvian loan originator owns the Swedish and Czech ones
- Needing every euro earning all the time, because money can wait weeks between notes
- Wanting published buyback and loss statistics before you invest, because VIAINVEST publishes none
