My Mintos review: Is the P2P platform still worthwhile in 2025?
Despite the coronavirus crisis and lender bankruptcies: In the past, most investors have had a positive experience with Mintos. But the P2P market is constantly changing! How is the market leader doing today? Are investments safe? And what returns can we expect?
I want to answer these and other questions today. After several years of activity on the platform, I have gained a lot of experience with Mintos! We’ll also take a closer look at the recent innovations and shed some light on the complex topic of taxes!
In brief
- Mintos offers P2P lending with high interest rates and serious risk
- The platform experienced a number of outages during the coronavirus crisis
- The retrieval is running successfully, but takes some time
- Mintos recently became a certified investment company
- New offers and additional securities may be of interest to investors
What exactly is Mintos?
Every day, people use P2P lending to finance personal purchases, realise salary advances and much more. Private investors provide them with the money they need and are rewarded with high interest rates.
This P2P platform is one of the pioneers of this business model. The Latvian company gained its first experience in granting personal loans back in 2015 and has since developed into the largest marketplace of its kind in Europe.
Mintos is merely an intermediary that connects private investors and professional lenders. These lenders in turn use the capital raised via Mintos to grant loans to their customers.
In addition to brokering, Mintos also plays a monitoring and safeguarding role. Mintos has gained experience in recovering defaulted loans or dealing with problematic lenders and always endeavours to protect users’ capital.
This is because such problems are among the biggest risks of P2P lending: Since private borrowers may not be able to make their repayments or entire lender companies could slide into insolvency, personal loans are not entirely without risk.
However, investors are rewarded for this risk with high interest rates! These are between 10 and 12 per cent per year. However, we can significantly influence this return and also the risks by selecting the loans.
| On the market since: | 2015 |
| Company headquarters: | Riga, Latvia |
| Regulated: | Yes (by the FCMC in Latvia) |
| Number of investors: | Over 500,000 (01/2025) |
| Financed loan volume: | Over 600 million euros |
| Yield: | 10- 11 % |
| Minimum investment amount: | EUR 10 |
| Buyback guarantee: | Yes, after 60 days delay |
| Auto Invest: | Yes |
| Secondary market: | Yes |
| Issue of a tax certificate: | Yes |
| Loyalty programme for investors: | No |
| Invest with Mintos: | Open an account now (start with this link*) |
| Rating: | See our P2P platform rating |
Mintos test & experience report: How secure is the P2P platform?
Like many financial service providers, Mintos was hit hard by the coronavirus crisis. The normally extremely rare defaults by lenders increased sharply during this period.
The reasons are quite simple:
Investments are secured with a so-called buyback guarantee. This means that lenders are obliged to repay the invested amount to investors if a borrower is more than 60 days in arrears.
In practice, this security mechanism has always worked well; during the coronavirus crisis, the number of payment defaults increased as many people were no longer able to make their repayments on time.
Individual lenders whose loans you could invest in on Mintos therefore had to buy back loans much more frequently and got into financial difficulties. At the same time, many investors withdrew their capital from the provider on a large scale in order to protect it from the crisis. This made it much more difficult for loan originators to raise further money through new investments, which further exacerbated the problem. Defaults and negative headlines became more frequent!
In some cases, Mintos even had to take legal action against lenders such as Monego to get them to fulfil their obligations. However, the situation seems to have improved significantly since then and a large proportion of the outstanding receivables have been recovered.
The peak in invested loans was reached shortly before the coronavirus crisis (blue arrow). Today, the company is once again on a growth trajectory.
Today, the platform is on its way back to its former greatness. My Mintos experience also confirms a strong upswing in recent months. Mintos has now surpassed its peak of almost 600 million euros in loans in 2020 and continues to grow steadily.
Withdrawal and risk with Mintos
The defaults of loan originators rose to an all-time high in the early days of the coronavirus crisis: Over 220 million euros in loan defaults accumulated in outstanding payments! An amount that was now missing from investors’ accounts.
Fortunately, Mintos had already gained experience with such problems and was able to recover some of the capital. The sum has now fallen to 131 million euros.
However, the process was slow and time-consuming. The long waiting time and uncertainty put a strain on investors and caused many to withdraw their money. Despite Mintos’ good work in recovering the lending, it will not be possible to refund 100% of the investments in all cases.
This means for new and existing investors: The abstract risk associated with personal loans is very real in this case! Despite the buy-back guarantee, defaults must be expected. An investment can still be worthwhile due to the high interest rates; however, we must take appropriate safety precautions, such as spreading the risk among as many lenders as possible!
How does the investment work?
Mintos currently offers three ready-made strategies for investors: ‘Core’, ‘Custom’ and ‘Manual Investing’. They are each associated with different criteria for the selection of possible lending. ETFs and bonds are also offered.
Good to know:
Mintos sets the maximum investment per lender at 15 % for all strategies. This means that one of the biggest risks – too much capital with one originator – has already been averted.
This makes it very easy for Mintos to get started, especially for new users! However, if you want to invest according to your own specific ideas, you can continue to use the auto-invest function and define extensive criteria yourself.
For me, this makes Mintos one of the most user-friendly platforms in the P2P sector, as investments can be made with just a few clicks and, if desired, can be extensively personalised.
Besides multi-loan platforms like Mintos, you can explore more niche solutions by reading our review on Ventus Energy.
Experience report P2P lending and taxes: What has changed at Mintos
Mintos has been an investment company licensed under EU law since 2021. However, this licence was accompanied by a number of changes, not all of which are positive for investors.
For around two years (2022), there has been an investment product called ‘notes’, which has an ISIN and can therefore be traded on stock exchanges or through brokers.
Here, investors can invest in bond packages consisting of 6 similar loans. It remains to be seen whether this ‘cross-over’ of P2P lending, promissory notes and funds will be successful. However, it certainly sounds like an interesting idea!
The new and significantly higher requirements imposed on Mintos also increase the security of our investments! Although fraud and misappropriation of funds have never been an issue for the Latvian company, they would now be even more difficult to carry out due to the stricter monitoring.
Unfortunately, not all of the changes are positive: Mintos is now obliged to levy a withholding tax depending on the country of origin. This is not a problem for German investors, as they can offset this against capital gains tax in their tax return. Nevertheless, this results in additional effort, which clouds the otherwise very simple process of a P2P investment.
As is usual for P2P platforms, the provider will issue a tax report for your tax return with just a few clicks. You can then forward this document to your tax office. Profits from personal loans are subject to withholding tax and solidarity surcharge totalling 26.3 percent plus any church tax.
Secondary market
Selling existing loans to other investors is a useful and often lucrative business. Anyone wishing to exit an investment early (for example, because money was needed quickly) can use the secondary market to do so.
My Mintos experience: Is Mintos still worthwhile in 2025?
My Mintos experience confirms this: Even in 2025, the giant among P2P platforms still offers attractive returns! Interest rates of 12, 15 or even 18 per cent are still possible with some loans.
At the same time, the last few months have shown that the dangers of P2P investments are very real! Numerous defaults during the coronavirus crisis have cost investors a lot – even if the company’s recovery has been very commendable.
So if you are not afraid of risk and are looking for high interest income, Mintos is the right place for you. However, if you can’t afford to lose your money in the worst-case scenario, you should look for other investment options.
In general, comprehensive diversification is recommended when investing in P2P lending. The individual loans should be spread across as many borrowers and countries as possible. A subdivision into different loan types (consumer loans, business loans, property…) is also advisable.
This reduces the damage that can occur in the event of a default. If you use this strategy for your entire portfolio and only invest a limited amount in P2P lending, the risk is usually manageable.
However, only you can decide whether Mintos is right for you and your investment strategy! If you would like to gain experience with Mintos, the platform is open to you with high interest rates and risks that should not be underestimated.
If you want to invest with Mintos, use this link and benefit from my Mintos bonus.
FAQ – Frequently asked questions about Mintos
