Esketit Review 2026: Unlicensed, Founder-Owned Lenders

Esketit is an online loan marketplace. Investors put money into claims on loans issued by lending companies — Spanish non-performing loans, Sri Lankan and Malaysian consumer loans, business loans to fintech firms, Latvian mortgages and Kazakh car loans — and earn interest. Esketit advertises returns of up to 14% a year with a €10 minimum.

The short answer for anyone deciding: Esketit has a working product and a record of paying investors, but it is not licensed anywhere, and most of what it lists comes from companies owned or founded by the same two people who own the platform. You are trusting one small group of people twice — as platform operator and as borrower — with no regulator watching either role.

The platform was set up in Ireland in 2020, started taking investments in 2021, and has operated through a Croatian company since 15 October 2025. We corrected our own listing in September 2026: Esketit does not hold an ECSP authorisation, as we previously showed. The current figures and our safety score are on the Esketit platform page; see our methodology for how licensing and related-party lending affect the score.

A lending company issues loans in its market. It then assigns claims on those loans to Esketit investors through assignment agreements; Esketit's own materials talk about "claim purchases". Your repayments come from the lending company as borrowers repay.

What you actually own

You own a claim acquired from the lending company, under a contract with the lending company and Esketit. You do not own a regulated financial instrument, and you have no claim on a licensed entity. If the lending company stops passing on money, your remedy is against that company.

Not every product is a plain loan

• Spanda Capital buys portfolios of non-performing loans in Spain and earns what it can collect. Esketit investors fund Spanda, not the original consumer borrowers in any normal sense.
• Nimbura in Malaysia uses "an indirect structure with a revolving loan pool", so investors get exposure to the underlying loans indirectly.
• Mojo Capital lends to fintech companies over two years at 12%, with principal repaid from month seven.

Pending payments

The Croatian platform added a "Pending payments" view that shows repayments due from lenders before the money reaches your account. It is useful for spotting delays early.

The companies

New investments go through Esketit Platform d.o.o., OIB 34592704188, registered at Strojarska cesta 20 in Zagreb. Croatia's FINA business register records it as a micro-enterprise registered for "other IT-related service activities", with 2025 revenue of €41,664, a net loss of €97,054 and no employees. The original Esketit Platform Limited (Ireland, company no. 673443, incorporated 6 July 2020) is still registered and still services contracts signed before the move.

The owners

Both companies are owned by Dāvis Barons and Matīss Ansviesulis, who are also the directors of the Croatian company. Independent coverage reports that the two founded the Latvian lender Creamfinance in 2012, later renamed AvaFin — which was for years one of Esketit's lenders.

Management

In July 2025 Esketit appointed Ieva Grigaļūne as chief executive (effective 30 July), with a background in the licensed investment sector, and Liene Pūgule-Kraučuka as chief legal officer, with experience of obtaining licences. The previous CEO, Vitālijs Zalovs, in post since 2021, moved to an advisory role.

A small operating company with no reported employees and a loss is not unusual for a platform whose staff sit in other group companies. But it means the entity you contract with has little capital of its own.

All new accounts are opened with the Croatian company, Esketit Platform d.o.o.

1. 1Register with your email address and accept the Croatian terms of use.
2. 2Verify your identity with an ID document.
3. 3Link a bank or payment account in your name.
4. 4Top up in euros — other currencies are rejected — with a €10 minimum.
5. 5Choose between manual purchases, the Diversified Strategy (spreads money across all lenders) or a Custom Strategy with your own criteria.

If you had an account with the Irish entity, you have to register again with the Croatian company, verify, accept the new terms and choose whether to divert repayments from your Irish claims into the new account. The Irish account keeps limited functions only: statements and withdrawals.

Before depositing, read the lender and regulation sections below. The key decision is not which strategy to pick, but how much you want to lend to companies owned by the platform's owners.

Esketit is simple to get going: a €10 minimum, a one-click Diversified Strategy, and instant top-ups from many major banks.

Signing up New accounts are opened directly with the Croatian company. You register with your email, accept the terms of use and verify your identity with a passport or ID card, then link a bank or payment account in your own name. Two-factor authentication with Google Authenticator is available; Esketit strongly recommends switching it on from your investor profile.

Deposits - Instant top-up: an open-banking payment run with Ecommpay under the EU's PSD2 rules. You choose Instant Top-Up, log in to your bank and approve the payment. Esketit says it covers the largest banks in each country, and some payments may take a few days for extra checks. - Manual SEPA transfer: takes up to two business days.

Both routes are euros only, with a €10 minimum.

Setting up investing There are three ways to invest, all found under the Auto-Purchase tab or in the marketplace: 1. Diversified Strategy: spreads money across all available lenders automatically, with only the amount to set. 2. Custom Strategy: built from scratch with your own criteria. 3. Manual purchases of individual claims.

Support Esketit handles support by email at support@esketit.com. Its FAQ handbook, updated in September 2026, walks through common tasks such as top-ups, strategies and account changes. Former investors of the Irish company need to register again with the Croatian entity, verify and accept the new terms; the announcement sets out what that involves.

Esketit accepts only euros. There are two ways to add money:

• Instant top-up from a pre-registered bank or payment account.
• Manual SEPA transfer, which Esketit says takes up to two business days.

Withdrawals go to your verified account and take up to two business days. Esketit's own FAQ does not list fees for bank-transfer deposits or withdrawals. Independent reviewers report that card top-ups now carry a fee; we could not confirm the amount from Esketit's own pages, so use a bank transfer.

Only uninvested cash can be withdrawn directly. Money in claims must wait for repayment, be cashed out through the Diversified Strategy, or be sold on the secondary market — see the liquidity section. For investors still on the Irish entity, repayments continue as borrowers pay, and can be diverted to the Croatian account.

Esketit advertises "annual returns of up to 14%". In its own blog posts during 2026 it describes users earning "12% on average". The rates attached to individual lenders, as Esketit presents them:

• Mojo Capital business loans: 12%
• MDI Finance (Sri Lanka): up to 12%
• Jet Finance (Kazakhstan): 10% target
• Credus Capital and A24 Group mortgages: lower, reflecting property security

On top of that, the loyalty programme adds 0.5% for balances above €25,000 and 1% above €50,000 on five lenders, and periodic cashback campaigns add small one-off amounts.

Esketit does not publish a platform-wide realised net return or loss rate. The headline is a gross interest rate on performing claims. What you keep depends on whether the lenders keep paying, on cash drag while money waits for new supply, and on tax. Independent trackers also report that the volume funded through Esketit fell by around 80% in the twelve months to August 2026 compared with the year before, which fits the exit of AvaFin and Money for Finance. Less supply means more cash sitting idle.

A 12–14% rate on a platform with no supervisor is the price of the risks described here, not a reward for choosing well; our risks page sets out the general case.

Esketit does not charge investors a management fee on primary purchases or auto-invest, and its FAQ lists no fees for bank-transfer deposits or withdrawals.

We could not find a published fee schedule on Esketit's own pages covering the secondary market or card top-ups, because most of esketit.com loads only after login. Independent reviews report no secondary market fee and a card top-up fee. Check the current terms of use before selling or paying by card.

The real cost of Esketit is not a fee. The lending companies pay the platform, and those lending companies are largely owned by the platform's owners. The spread between what borrowers pay and what you receive funds both the lender and the platform, and nobody outside the group checks how it is split.

Esketit offers three ways out before maturity on the Croatian platform:

1. 1Cash-out from the Diversified Strategy, which sells your claims to other investors.
2. 2Secondary market for claims bought manually or through a Custom Strategy, at a premium or discount.
3. 3Waiting for repayment. Mojo Capital loans run for two years; Nimbura loans for 30 days to 6 months; Jet Finance loans can run up to 84 months.

What the October 2025 move showed

When Esketit moved its operations from Ireland to Croatia, accounts left on the Irish entity lost access to new primary and secondary market purchases, auto-purchase and cash-out, and top-ups were restricted. Investors who wanted liquidity had to re-register with the Croatian company first. Independent reviewers reported that the change came with little warning and that early exit was unavailable for a period.

No money was lost in that episode as far as we can tell. But it shows the point clearly: on an unlicensed platform, liquidity features exist at the operator's discretion and can be switched off with a blog post. Treat money on Esketit as locked until the underlying claims repay.

The buyback

Most claims carry a buyback obligation: if a loan is more than 60 days late, the lending company buys back your claim. Esketit's own explanation is that the lender pays you and takes over the collection. The buyback is given by the lending company, not by Esketit, and it is only as strong as that company's cash. If the lender fails, the buyback fails with it.

Who the lenders are

Esketit's own blog posts describe the ownership of its main lenders:

• Spanda Capital (Spanish non-performing loans): "owned by Esketit founders". It became the biggest source of new supply after AvaFin left, listing about €7 million of claims in June 2025.
• Mojo Capital (business loans to fintech firms): "fully owned by Esketit shareholders Matiss Ansviesulis and Davis Barons".
• MDI Finance (holding company of the Sri Lankan lender Loanme.lk): founded by Ansviesulis and Barons, governed from Riga.
• Nimbura (Malaysian consumer loans, launched November 2025): founded by the same two co-founders.

The lenders not described as founder-owned are Jet Finance (MFO Mogo Kazakhstan, regulated by Kazakhstan's ARDFM, rated B- by Fitch, car loans with GPS-tracked collateral and a 100% buyback), Credus Capital and A24 Group (mortgage loans below 70% loan-to-value, run by the same team as each other), and JMD Investments, about which we found little.

Why it matters

When the platform owners also own the borrowers, the checks a marketplace is supposed to provide — independent due diligence, the ability to suspend a failing lender, enforcing a buyback — become checks on themselves. The Spanda Q3 2025 update, for example, reports an outstanding face value of €636 million against estimated remaining collections of €36 million, which is normal for bought-in bad debt but makes the investor's return depend on collection work done by a founder-owned company.

Esketit is not licensed. It does not appear on the EU register of crowdfunding service providers kept by ESMA — Croatia's supervisor HANFA points to that register rather than keeping its own list — and we found no authorisation for either the Irish or the Croatian company. The Croatian company is registered for IT services, not financial services.

We previously listed Esketit as holding an ECSP authorisation. That was wrong, and we corrected it in September 2026.

What the management says

In July 2025 the company said it was "taking important steps toward licensing our operations", and the new CEO called licensing "a natural next step in our growth". We found no public licence application, timetable or named regulator. Until a licence is granted, the plans do not change anything for investors.

What that means for you

• No supervisor checks how client money is held, how conflicts with founder-owned lenders are managed or how the platform would be wound down.
• There is no investor compensation scheme and no deposit guarantee. These are not bank deposits.
• Your protection is the contracts, governed by Irish law for older claims and Croatian law for newer ones, enforced through the courts at your own cost.

For comparison, Afranga pays similar rates to a similarly related-party book, but under an ECSP licence from Bulgaria's regulator. Esketit vs Afranga sets the two side by side, and our Afranga review covers what that licence does and does not add.

Esketit's record of repayments to date is good, and it deserves credit for that. The clearest test was the Utopia/Lyric music-royalty advances: after Utopia Music AG entered liquidation in November 2024, the special-purpose vehicle kept paying and all advances were fully repaid by the end of the second quarter of 2025, ahead of schedule, with no investor losses.

The platform has, however, changed a great deal in eighteen months:

• June 2025: AvaFin, a long-standing lender, left after its April 2024 takeover by South Africa's Capitec Bank, which now funds it directly. Esketit said AvaFin repurchased its listed loans.
• July 2025: new CEO and chief legal officer; licensing announced as a goal.
• August 2025: Money for Finance (Jordan) stopped listing new claims and said it would repay existing ones in an orderly way. MDI Finance joined.
• October 2025: move from Ireland to Croatia; liquidity features switched off on Irish accounts.
• November 2025 to April 2026: Nimbura (founder-founded) and Jet Finance (independent) joined.

The result is that the independent, larger lenders that once anchored the book have left, and new supply has come mainly from founder-owned companies. Esketit does not publish audited platform accounts for investors, and the lenders' financial disclosure is limited.

1. 1No regulation. No supervisor, no compensation scheme, no required segregation of client money that anyone checks.
2. 2Related-party lending. Spanda, Mojo, MDI Finance and Nimbura are owned or founded by the platform's owners. A problem at the owners hits the platform and most of the lenders at once.
3. 3Lender failure. The 60-day buyback is only as strong as each lender. Several of them are small, young or in high-risk markets such as Sri Lanka and Malaysia.
4. 4Liquidity at the operator's discretion. The October 2025 migration showed cash-out and the secondary market can be switched off.
5. 5Thin operating company. The Croatian entity reported €41,664 of revenue and a €97,054 loss for 2025.
6. 6Shrinking supply. Independent data show volumes down sharply since 2025, which means more idle cash and fewer independent lenders.
7. 7Legal complexity. Older claims sit under Irish law with the Irish entity; newer ones under Croatian law.

Your capital is at risk. Size any Esketit position as money you could lose without changing your plans.

This is general information, not tax advice.

We could not find a current statement from Esketit on withholding tax for the Croatian platform or on the format of its annual tax report, because those pages sit behind the login. Check in your account whether any tax is deducted at source and what statement is available for the year.

In most European countries, interest from claims bought on Esketit is taxable income in your country of residence, and you must declare it yourself. Bonuses and cashback may also be taxable. Losses from defaulted claims and secondary market discounts are treated differently from country to country, and some countries do not allow them to be offset at all.

Because Esketit is not a regulated financial institution in your country, it may not report your income to your tax authority automatically. That does not change your obligation to declare it. Speak to a tax adviser in your country of residence.