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Hive5 review.

Watch closely Zagreb, Croatia Short-term consumer, SME business
By Daniel Brenner, Senior Editor · Updated 2026-05-01
CrowdIndex score
4.8 / 10
★★☆☆☆
High Caution Required
Avg. Return
12–14%, up to 14.5%
Min. Investment
€10
Auto-invest
Yes
Regulator
Unregulated
Since
2022
Founded2022
HQZagreb, Croatia
RegulatorUnregulated
AUM€175M+
Investors28.9K+
Avg yield12–14%, up to…
Min€10
Bonus—
Languages3
Secondary mktYes
AutoInvestYes
Default rate—

Hive5 Review — Higher-Yield P2P Marketplace With Concentrated Ownership and No Financial License

★★★☆☆ Use with Caution | CrowdIndex Score: 5.5 / 10

Hive5 is a Croatian-registered peer-to-peer marketplace that offers 12-14% annual returns on short-term loans originated by lenders that all sit inside the same corporate group. The platform openly states it is not regulated under any financial services license. Ownership consolidated further in 2025 when one of the two co-founders sold his 35% stake to Ruptela Group, leaving Andrius Rupšys with 100% beneficial control. A CEO statement period during which Hive5 was publicly described as profitable while group accounts still reported operating losses is a documented credibility issue.

What is Hive5 in 60 seconds

Hive5 is a marketplace where retail investors fund short-term loans issued by four lenders — Ekspres Pożyczka and Firmeo (Poland), FinJet (Spain) and Credilink (Romania) — all of which are subsidiaries of the same parent group, Hive Finance. Investors do not buy regulated financial instruments; instead they buy claim rights on the underlying loan receivables. The legal structure is intentionally outside EU crowdfunding rules (ECSP — European Crowdfunding Service Providers regulation) and outside MiFID II (the EU’s main investment-firm regulation). Loans are short (30-90 days for consumer), the minimum ticket is €10, and the platform offers an Immediate Repayment Commitment — it pays you back from its own balance sheet if a borrower is late, while it pursues recovery from the lender behind the scenes.

Strengths

  • Multilingual platform with low entry barrier. Hive5 supports English and Spanish in full, with partial German coverage, and accepts investments from €10. This is the lowest minimum among platforms we benchmark and makes it accessible to new investors who want to test the product without committing meaningful capital. For comparison, Mintos requires €10 too but PeerBerry and Maclear typically use €50.

  • Clear individual loan disclosure on each project. Each listed loan shows the originator, country, loan term, interest rate, and buyback (a guarantee from the loan originator to repurchase defaulted loans) status. Group-level audited consolidated financial statements are also published (auditor: UAB Veritas Auditas, Lithuania) — which is more transparency than some unregulated peers offer, even if the underlying conflict of interest (covered in Things to Watch) remains.

  • Growing AUM and operational track record so far. Total funded volume reached €175M by February 2026 — meaningful scale for a platform under four years old — with the group reporting its first positive EBITDA (€2.57M) and a thin net profit (€55K) in 2024. Investors with public portfolio diaries report zero late payments or defaults on their own positions through 2026. Operational execution to date has been clean even where structural concerns remain.

Things to Watch

  • Ownership is concentrated in one person, and the 2025 ownership change adds governance questions. As of late 2025, Andrius Rupšys owns 100% of Hive Finance — 65% directly and 35% indirectly through Ruptela Group, the GPS/fleet-management company he founded. Co-founder Ričardas Vandzinskas sold his 35% stake to Ruptela Group in 2025 and exited the group entirely. Single-owner structures are not unusual in P2P, but they leave investors fully exposed to the judgement, financial health, and continuity decisions of one person. There is no independent board oversight publicly documented, and the rationale for the ownership reshuffle has not been disclosed in detail.

  • The CEO publicly described the group as profitable while audited accounts reported losses. Multiple independent reviewers (P2P Empire and re:think P2P) have documented public statements made during 2023-2024 in which Hive Finance was described as already profitable, while official accounts showed a €755K loss in 2022 and a €410K loss in 2023. The group only reached an actual profit (€55K net) in 2024. This is the kind of misrepresentation that, while not unique to Hive5, materially affects how much weight you can give to forward-looking statements from platform leadership.

  • No MiFID II license, no ECSP license, no investor compensation scheme. Hive5 is the only platform in our top 19 that explicitly states in its footer that it is not regulated under any financial services license. The legal opinion published on the platform’s blog argues that buying claim rights on loan receivables is not a regulated activity — which may be technically correct under Croatian law, but means investors have no access to the €20,000 EU investor compensation scheme that protects clients of MiFID II investment firms, and no ECSP supervision over conflicts of interest, marketing claims, or default-handling procedures.

  • All loan originators are owned by the same parent group. Ekspres Pożyczka, Firmeo (both Poland), FinJet (Spain) and Credilink (Romania) are all subsidiaries of Hive Finance Group. Hive5 is therefore simultaneously the marketplace listing loans and the ultimate beneficial owner of the entities issuing those loans. This is a structural conflict of interest (a situation where the same party benefits from both sides of a transaction) that an ECSP-regulated platform would be required to disclose and manage under formal rules — but Hive5 is not subject to those rules.

  • Track record is short and the recovery process has not been tested at scale. The platform has been operating for less than three years (founded May 2022). Default rate, late payment rate, and recovery rate are not publicly disclosed on the statistics page — Tier 1 and Tier 2 platforms typically publish at least default and recovery numbers. The Immediate Repayment Commitment, whereby Hive5 pays investors from its own funds while pursuing the borrower, depends entirely on the platform having enough cash on hand. It is not backed by a separate provision fund, so if multiple originators were to face problems simultaneously, the commitment could be tested in a way it has not been yet.

How It Works

  1. Register. Create an account on hive5.com with an email address.
  2. Verify your identity (KYC — Know Your Customer, the identity check banks and lenders are legally required to run). Upload an ID document and proof of address.
  3. Deposit funds. Transfer EUR via SEPA bank transfer. Minimum deposit and minimum loan investment are both €10. The 2% welcome cashback is applied to qualifying investments made within 30 days of registration, up to a maximum of €200.
  4. Choose loans or set up Auto-invest. Either select individual loans manually from the listed projects, filtered by originator, country, term and interest rate, or configure Auto-invest with your preferred criteria. The secondary market lets you exit early by selling claim rights to other investors.
  5. Receive interest payments. Interest accrues daily and is paid as the underlying loan is repaid. If a loan is more than 60 days late, the originator is contractually obliged to buy back the principal plus accrued interest; in practice, Hive5 normally pays the investor immediately under its Immediate Repayment Commitment and pursues the originator separately.

Who Hive5 Is For

Hive5 is best suited for experienced P2P investors who already hold positions on regulated platforms and want a small allocation to higher-yield, short-duration consumer and SME loans, with full awareness that they are giving up regulatory protection in exchange for that yield. The €10 entry point and the secondary market make it easy to test small positions; the 30-90 day loan terms mean capital recycles quickly so you can re-evaluate after a few cycles rather than being locked in for years.

Hive5 is not the right fit if this would be your first or main P2P platform, if you rely on the EU investor compensation scheme (it does not apply here), if you want a long operating track record (Hive5 is under four years old), or if you cannot tolerate the structural conflict of interest from all originators being inside the same parent group. It is also not appropriate if the CEO credibility concerns documented in Things to Watch matter to you — these are sourced from independent reviewers, not internal opinion, but they have not been formally retracted or contested by the platform.

Compared to Alternatives

Hive5 vs. Maclear. Both platforms sit outside the strongest EU regulatory frameworks — Maclear holds a Swiss PolyReg SRO membership (anti-money-laundering scope only), Hive5 holds no financial license at all. Beyond that, the gap widens. Maclear originates loans directly to independent SME and real-estate borrowers across Europe; Hive5 runs all loans through originators it owns. Maclear’s CEO personally covered the platform’s only default to date (the Vibroedil case, €150K, July 2025); Hive5 has documented credibility issues from the period when group leadership publicly described the business as profitable while accounts reported losses. Yields are roughly comparable (Maclear 14.5-14.9%, Hive5 12-14%). For investors who want higher-yield P2P exposure outside the strict ECSP regime, Maclear is the materially cleaner option.

Hive5 vs. Mintos. This is the comparison that frames the trade-off most clearly. Mintos is the largest P2P platform in Europe by lifetime volume, holds a MiFID II Investment Firm license, and provides up to €20,000 investor compensation in qualifying scenarios. Yields are 8-11% on Mintos versus 12-14% on Hive5. The yield premium on Hive5 is the price of giving up regulatory protection, single-source ownership concentration, and the conflict-of-interest concerns. For most retail investors building a first P2P portfolio, Mintos is the more rational starting point and Hive5 is at best a small satellite position.

Hive5 vs. Robocash. Robocash is the closest functional peer — both are short-term consumer-lending marketplaces where the platform and the loan originators sit inside the same broader group (Robocash Holdings). Robocash has the longer track record (operating since 2017 versus 2022 for Hive5), reports default and recovery data publicly, and has not had the same documented CEO credibility incidents. Yields are similar at 10-13%. If you specifically want short-term consumer-loan exposure with the group-owned-originator structure, Robocash is the more established choice. Hive5’s advantages over Robocash are the lower €10 minimum and the 2% welcome cashback, but neither outweighs the longer operating history and cleaner public record of Robocash.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Hive5 regulated? No. Hive5 explicitly states in its site footer and help pages that it is not regulated under any financial services license. The platform’s legal position, supported by a published legal opinion from a Croatian law firm, is that selling claim rights on loan receivables is not a regulated activity under Croatian law. This means no EU ECSP supervision, no MiFID II investor protection, and no €20,000 investor compensation scheme.

Who owns Hive5? As of late 2025, Andrius Rupšys holds 100% beneficial ownership of Hive Finance Group, the parent of Hive5. He owns 65% directly and 35% indirectly through Ruptela Group (the GPS/fleet-management company he founded in 2007). Co-founder Ričardas Vandzinskas sold his 35% stake to Ruptela Group in 2025 and exited the group.

What is the Immediate Repayment Commitment? If a borrower is late on a loan, Hive5 pays the investor the principal and accrued interest from the platform’s own cash, then pursues collection from the loan originator separately. This is faster than the standard buyback model where investors wait for the originator to repay. The commitment is not backed by a separate provision fund — it depends on Hive5 having sufficient cash on hand at the time, which has not been stress-tested at large scale.

What returns can I expect? Base annual yields run 12-14%, and Hive5’s loyalty program adds up to a further 1% for portfolios above €5,000 held for 90+ days. Reported returns assume no defaults. The platform does not publicly disclose its default rate, so the realized net return after losses is difficult for an outside investor to verify independently.

What is the minimum investment? €10 per loan. This is the lowest minimum among the platforms we cover.

Bottom Line

Hive5 has executed operationally — €175M funded, no reported default incidents on individual investor portfolios, audited group accounts published — but the structural setup carries risks that more conservative investors should weigh carefully. The platform has no financial license, all loan originators sit inside the same parent group, ownership consolidated to a single individual in 2025, and there are documented credibility issues from prior public statements about profitability. The 12-14% yields exist because investors are accepting these risks. Consider Hive5 only for small allocations within an already diversified P2P portfolio that has its base built on regulated platforms; experienced investors only.

Affiliate disclosure. CrowdIndex earns a commission when readers sign up to platforms through links on this page. This does not affect our editorial assessment. Hive5’s ranking on CrowdIndex is based on the editorial criteria documented on our Methodology page. We last reviewed this article on May 18, 2026.