Newer & Niche P2P Entrants: Maclear, Debitum & Lendermarket

Reviewed by NorwegianSpark Editorial — written with AI assistance and reviewed by the NorwegianSpark SA editorial team · Last updated: August 2026

Capital at risk. These are unsecured or lightly secured loans on platforms with shorter operating histories than the sector's established names. There is no deposit protection, funds are illiquid, advertised rates are best-case figures, and you can lose part or all of what you invest. This is information, not advice.

First, a correction to the premise

Grouping Lendermarket, Debitum and Maclear together as "newer entrants" is convenient but not accurate, and the differences between them matter more than what they share. Sorted by the supervision each actually operates under, they are three quite different propositions:

So this is not a tier. It is three platforms at three very different points on the supervision scale, and the one advertising the highest return sits at the thinnest end of it. Every regulatory detail below was read from the operator's own site, with the date it was read, and the full fifteen-platform dataset is published on our P2P regulatory status page.

Lendermarket — consumer loans under an EU crowdfunding licence

Lendermarket Limited is an Irish company, registration 585178. Its own site states that "Lendermarket is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland and is duly authorised as a Crowdfunding Service Provider under Regulation (EU) 2020/1503" (lendermarket.com, read 1 August 2026). Authorisation under that regulation can be checked independently on ESMA's public register, which is the point of it existing.

The buyback wording is unusually clear, and worth quoting exactly: "if a loan is overdue by 60 days, the loan originator repays your principal plus accrued interest." Read who repays. The loan originator, not Lendermarket. A buyback is an unsecured promise from a third-party lending company, so it works well against ordinary, scattered late payments and offers little protection in the scenario that would actually hurt you — a wave of correlated defaults that takes the originator down with them.

On returns, Lendermarket publishes a "13.46% Weighted avg. interest rate", which it defines on the same page as the "Weighted average of available loans as of 06.02.2026", adding: "Your portfolio returns can be higher or lower. Past performance does not guarantee future returns." That is an honest label and it is worth reading carefully — it describes the rate on loans available at a stated date. It is not an achieved investor return, and it is not what you will earn after defaults, recovery delays and cash drag. Our Lendermarket review goes further into the originator structure.

See current Lendermarket loans

Debitum — SME lending under an investment-firm licence

Debitum is operated by SIA DN Operator, Latvian registration 42103092209, and holds an "Investment brokerage company license issued by Latvijas Banka" (debitum.investments, captured 27 July 2026).

Two things follow from that sentence, and both cut in useful directions.

First, the borrower class is different. Debitum funds loans to small and medium-sized businesses rather than consumers. SME credit does not behave like consumer credit in a downturn: consumer defaults tend to rise gradually and diffusely, while SME defaults cluster by sector and region and arrive faster. That is a genuine diversification benefit next to a consumer-loan book, and a genuine concentration risk if a single sector turns.

Second, and more subtly: Debitum markets itself as a "Licensed P2P Lending Platform", and the licence in question is an investment-brokerage authorisation, not an ECSPR crowdfunding licence. Most readers will assume the crowdfunding regime is the stronger of the two. Frequently it is not. An investment-firm licence under MiFID II typically carries national investor-compensation-scheme cover; an ECSPR crowdfunding licence does not. Neither covers you when a borrower defaults, but on the narrower question of the firm failing in relation to your assets, the less-advertised licence is often the one doing more work.

Review Debitum's SME loans

Maclear — the one that genuinely needs the extra scrutiny

Maclear AG is a Swiss company at Richtistrasse 7, 8304 Wallisellen. Its site describes the platform as "organized thoroughly following the Swiss financial market rules and regulations" and states that it is "a PolyReg Services GmbH SRO member" (maclear.ch, read 1 August 2026).

That sentence is accurate and it is easy to read as more than it is. SRO membership is anti-money-laundering supervision. It is not a financial-services licence, and it is not prudential supervision by FINMA. It says something about the platform's controls on where money comes from. It says nothing about its capital adequacy, its underwriting, or what happens to your position if the company fails.

On the same page, Maclear advertises "Earn up to 16.5% + Referral 3% and Loyalty 3% returns", and displays its own platform statistics: "EUR 23M+ Total Funded", "EUR 4,58M+ Repaid Total", "8195 Investors" and "1/0 default / late loans" (all read 1 August 2026; these are the platform's own unaudited self-reported figures, quoted verbatim).

The near-zero default figure deserves a paragraph, because it is the most persuasive number on the page and the least informative. A loan book that has repaid EUR 4.58m of EUR 23m funded is a young book, and defaults concentrate late in a loan's life, not early. A platform that has not yet run most of its originations through to maturity — and has not operated through a credit downturn at all — will show a very low default rate almost regardless of how well it underwrites. That statistic tells you the book is young. It does not tell you it is safe, and it should not be read as evidence that the 16.5% headline is being earned without risk.

Pair that with the highest advertised rate of the three and the thinnest published supervision, and the sensible position is a small, deliberately capped allocation.

See Maclear's current projects

A checklist for any young platform

The risks specific to this group

A benchmark worth comparing against

Before committing to any of the above, read the terms next to a platform operating under a licence with investor cover attached. Nectaro — SIA Nectaro, Latvian registration 40203016025, licensed by Latvijas Banka — states on its own site that it is "a member of the national investor compensation scheme established under EU Directive 97/9/EC", covering "90% of their net loss, up to a maximum of EUR 20 000" (nectaro.eu, read 1 August 2026).

That cover applies to the failure of the investment firm in relation to your assets. It does not pay out when a borrower defaults or an originator fails to honour a buyback — credit risk remains entirely yours. But it is a concrete, verifiable protection that none of the newer platforms above offers, and it is the right yardstick against which to judge whether a few extra percentage points of advertised yield is worth what you give up. Our Nectaro review and our comparison of the consumer-loan marketplaces go through the trade-off in detail.

For the wider picture, see our roundup of European P2P platforms by regime, the complete guide to P2P lending, and the full platform directory.

About this article

This article was produced by NorwegianSpark Editorial — written with AI assistance and reviewed by the NorwegianSpark SA editorial team. YieldNav is operated by NorwegianSpark SA (org. 834 984 172), founded by Thomas Løvås Lokøy and Øyvind. We are not licensed financial advisers, and nothing here is personalised advice. We have not invested through these platforms and claim no first-hand use; every factual statement above is sourced to the operator's own published pages, with the date it was read. Some links are affiliate links; where a partner pays us, your capital is still at risk and our editorial view is unchanged. Read our about page and affiliate disclosure.