Income Marketplace Review 2026: Careful Design, No Licence

Income Marketplace — usually just "Income" — is an online platform run by Income Company OÜ in Tallinn, Estonia, where private investors buy claims on loans issued by non-bank lenders. The company was registered in July 2020, started operating in 2021 and now runs at getincome.com; the older incomemarketplace.com domain no longer works.

At the end of 2025 Income reported €24.8 million of active investments, 5,009 active investors, more than 10,000 registered investors and over €200 million invested since launch. That makes it a small platform: a fraction of the size of Mintos, and smaller than Debitum.

Income's selling point is protection design. Besides the usual buyback, it asks each lender to keep a subordinated "junior share" in its loans and sizes a "cash-flow buffer" meant to cover investors if the lender itself fails. Its main weakness is that none of this sits inside a regulated structure: we found no financial licence for Income Company OÜ. The live score is on the Income Marketplace platform page, and our methodology explains how we weigh licences against structure.

A lender — Income calls them loan originators — issues consumer, car or small-business loans in its home market. It then lists those loans on Income, and investors buy claim rights to them under an assignment agreement. The money goes to the lender, borrowers repay the lender, and the lender passes payments back through Income.

What you actually own

You own a share of a claim on a loan, bought from the lender. You do not own a regulated financial instrument, and you have no claim on Income's balance sheet. In practice your repayment depends on three things: the borrower paying, the lender passing that money on, and — if the lender fails — Income being able to take over the loan book and collect.

Loan terms

Income caps rates at 15% a year and the minimum is €10 per loan. Most loans are short to medium term; some SME loans from Hoovi are three-year loans with an early buyback after 12 months.

Income's annual report lists three wholly owned subsidiaries — Income ID SPV Pte. Ltd in Singapore, and Income EST SPV OÜ and Income UK SPV OÜ in Estonia. We could not find a public document explaining exactly what role each plays in holding or collecting loans, so we do not rely on them in this review.

The operating company is Income Company OÜ, registry code 16014116, with share capital of €30,330.14. According to the Estonian commercial register, the largest shareholder and beneficial owner is Karlheinz Hauptmann with 62.59%, followed by holding companies including KJ Holdings OÜ (9.47%) and MR Holdings OÜ (5.21%). Other shareholders include retail investors from crowdfunding rounds on Seedrs and SeedBlink.

The management board members are Alexander Hauptmann and Lavrenti Tšudakov, who has been chief executive since late 2023. Co-founder Kimmo Rytkönen, the previous chief executive, remains involved.

The company is very small. Its 2025 annual report shows six full-time staff, revenue of €693,261, a net loss of €437,981, total assets of €390,847, cash of €64,320 and equity of €94,175 — positive for the first time after €−69,876 a year earlier, mainly because shareholder loans were converted into shares. The report does not state that the accounts were audited. Credit-information service Inforegister also shows a VAT debt of about €22,000 under a payment plan running to 25 December 2026.

None of this means your loan claims are at immediate risk, but it does mean Income has little capacity of its own to absorb problems — and without a licence, no regulator sets minimum capital for it.

Income accepts private investors resident in the European Economic Area with an EEA-issued passport, ID card or residence permit, according to independent reviews of its onboarding. Legal entities can also invest.

1. 1Register with your email and create a password, then turn on two-factor authentication — Income added it in August 2026.
2. 2Verify your identity with an EEA-issued ID document.
3. 3Transfer euros by SEPA from a bank account in your own name in the EEA. Income only accepts euro SEPA transfers.
4. 4Choose loans manually or set up Auto Invest with filters by lender, rate and term.
5. 5Before investing, read the lender pages: Income posts each lender's financial statements and the protection terms on its blog.

Because there is no secondary market, pick loan terms you are prepared to hold to maturity. Start with an amount you could leave in the platform for a year or more.

Income is simple to run once you are set up: it charges investors no fees, Auto Invest can do the loan picking, and the whole account can be managed from a phone app.

Signing up and funding

Sign-up follows the familiar pattern — email and password, an optional second login factor, then an ID check with an EEA-issued document. Funding is by euro SEPA transfer only, with no charge from Income; card payments are not offered. From there you can buy loans by hand from €10 each or let Auto Invest take over.

Setting up Auto Invest

Income splits its Auto Invest settings into two layers:

• Five basic filters: interest rate, remaining term, loan type, country and loan status (current, or up to 60 days late).
• Seven advanced filters: loan amount, available amount, whether to exclude extendable loans, the number of extensions already made, issue and listing dates, and whether to add to loans you already hold.

Income itself says most investors do not use the advanced filters, so a working strategy can be set up with only a few choices.

App and dashboard

Income Company OÜ publishes an app for iOS and Android. Its store listings describe manual investing and Auto Invest strategies, deposits and withdrawals, push notifications and an overview of the account and earnings; the iOS listing adds biometric login. On 22 September 2026 the Google Play listing showed a 4.2-star rating and more than 10,000 downloads; the App Store listing did not yet have enough ratings to show a score. The app is in English.

Documents and support

A yearly tax report can be downloaded from the account dashboard. Support is reachable by email at hello@getincome.com or by phone on a UK (+44 116 464 9956) or Estonian (+372 660 0353) number, Monday to Friday, 10:00–17:00 CET. Income's blog and YouTube channel also carry step-by-step guides to the platform's features.

Deposits are by SEPA bank transfer in euros only; card payments and other currencies are not offered. Income states that there are no fees for investors, including deposits and withdrawals, though your own bank may charge for a transfer.

Withdrawals go back to a bank account in the EEA. Only uninvested cash can be withdrawn; money in loans comes back as borrowers repay, when the lender buys a loan back, or through an early buyback where one is offered.

We could not confirm from Income's own pages how client money is held while it sits uninvested — for example whether it is kept in a segregated client account. At a licensed investment firm or crowdfunding provider this is set by law. At Income it depends on the company's own arrangements, which is one of the practical consequences of the missing licence. Keep idle cash low.

Income had 13 active lenders at the end of 2025. In its 2025 recap it named the largest by amount listed that year:

• ITF Group (Bulgaria): €30.36 million listed
• Danarupiah / DanaKredi (Indonesia): €18.88 million
• Virtus Lending (Kosovo): €10.04 million, a newcomer in 2025
• Autofino (Lithuania, car loans): €1.63 million
• Simpleros (Spain, payday loans): €765,700

Of €71.1 million listed in 2025, ITF Group and Danarupiah together accounted for roughly 69%. That is more concentrated than the "13 lenders" headline suggests, and both lend in high-cost consumer markets. DanaKredi's own 2025 accounts, posted by Income in September 2026, show revenue down 53% and profit down 66% year on year, although it remained profitable with €31.0 million of equity.

Changes in 2026

• One Leasing (North Macedonia) joined in August 2026. Its parent, Virtus Invesco Partners LLC, signed a parent-company guarantee on 6 August 2026 covering One Leasing's obligations, payable within five business days of Income's demand and governed by Kosovo law.
• Current Auto LV (Latvia) left the platform on 18 September 2026, buying back all its loans with principal and accrued interest. Its Lithuanian sister company remains.
• Sandfield Capital (UK) loans are described by Income as protected by buyback and insurance.

Auto Invest can spread money across lenders; check that it is not simply following the two largest.

Income caps rates at 15% a year. Its 2025 recap gives an average interest rate of 13.51% across the year.

Either way, 13.51% is a gross interest rate on loans, not what investors kept. Income does not publish a loss-adjusted return series. What it has published suggests that, so far, losses have been small relative to volume: the only lender in default, ClickCash, had €182,878 unpaid when it was suspended, against more than €200 million invested since 2021. That is a good record for a platform of this age — but it is a record built in a period without a broad crisis among its main lenders.

Also keep in mind:

• uninvested cash earns nothing;
• early buybacks can come with a discount;
• there is no tax withholding, so the 13.5% is before your own income tax.

A rate above 13% on consumer loans in Indonesia or Bulgaria prices real risk. See our risks page for why a high rate is not a feature in itself.

Income states that investors pay no fees. In practice:

• Investing and Auto Invest: free.
• Deposits and withdrawals: free from Income's side; your bank may charge.
• Currency exchange: not applicable — the platform is euro only.
• Early Buyback: no fee as such, but the payout may be discounted depending on timing; the maximum discount is shown on the loan listing.

Income earns its revenue from the lenders, which pay service fees on the portfolio they fund through the platform. That aligns Income's income with volume placed rather than with loan performance — normal in this market, but worth remembering when reading upbeat lender announcements on its blog.

There is no secondary market. Income's January 2026 recap said it planned to launch one, together with two-factor authentication, by Q2 2026. Two-factor authentication arrived on 18 August 2026; we found no announcement of a secondary market by 21 September 2026, and independent reviewers note it has been promised before.

Your ways out are therefore:

1. 1Wait for repayment — many loans are short, so money recycles fairly quickly in normal times.
2. 2Early Buyback on selected loans, where the lender agrees in advance to buy back before maturity, subject to its cash-flow and possibly at a discount.
3. 3Buyback on default after 60 days overdue, which depends on the lender paying.

When a lender is suspended, the money exposed to it is locked until recovery ends. ClickCash investors have been waiting since November 2022.

This is the part of Income that stands out, and it deserves to be understood precisely.

1. Buyback obligation

Every loan carries a buyback obligation: if it is more than 60 days overdue, the lender must buy it back with principal and interest. This protects you against individual borrowers. It is only as strong as the lender giving it, and it is not a guarantee from Income.

2. Junior share

Each lender keeps its own share in the loans it lists — the junior share — and that share is contractually subordinated to investors. If the lender fails and Income takes over the loans, the junior share absorbs losses first.

3. Cash-flow buffer

Income defines the buffer as the cash coming from the loan portfolio that should cover investments 1:1 "assuming all the identified risks materialize". It sizes it by analysing the lender's historical repayments, then adjusting for risks such as currency or economic shocks, and sets the junior share accordingly. If a lender defaults, Income says it takes control of the pledged portfolio and collects, and that "all the profit from the portfolio as a whole as well as the Junior Share will be first used to pay investor principal and interest."

What it does not do

The buffer only works if Income can actually take over and collect the lender's loan book — which depends on the pledge, the lender's cooperation, local law and the cost of enforcing. It is not cash set aside in advance, and Income has not published buffer percentages per lender. The One Leasing parent guarantee is an extra layer for one lender only, and its value depends on Virtus.

The design is thoughtful. The only real test so far, ClickCash, is described in the next section — and it did not go the way the model describes.

ClickCash, a Brazilian consumer lender, was suspended in November 2022 after failing to carry out buybacks. Income reported an original unpaid balance of €246,878, of which €64,000 (26%) was paid by 10 November 2022, leaving €182,878. Recovery was to come from the pledged loan portfolio, first estimated at six to eight months.

What happened next, from Income's own updates:

• 16 November 2023: €147,991.79 of principal was still in recovery. Income agreed a plan under which ClickCash would pay a fixed €5,000 a month, with Income bridging any shortfall from its own funds. Income said it had not taken legal action because enforcement costs would consume a large part of what could be recovered from ClickCash's small loan book.
• 21 October 2024: 40.9% recovered, of which €40,000 came from Income's bridge payments. Income paused those bridge payments from August 2024 while ClickCash sought new funding.
• 17 December 2024: the pause was extended through January 2025.
• 2025: Income resumed bridge payments from March 2025.
• Latest status on Income's ClickCash page: 50.8% recovered, with €55,000 bridged by Income.

Our reading: the amount is small relative to the platform, and Income has been open about it. But the cash-flow buffer did not recover investors' money from the loan portfolio as designed. Recovery has relied on a negotiated payment plan and on Income's own cash — from a company with €64,320 in the bank at the end of 2025 — and after nearly four years about half is still outstanding. Income has since tightened its criteria to require larger loan books, so that enforcement is worth the cost.

Some earlier descriptions of Income, including ours, cited a "Lion Finance" default recovered in full through a monitoring account. We could find no record of such a lender on Income and no longer repeat that claim.

No other lender has been suspended. Current Auto LV's exit in September 2026 ended with a full buyback, which is how a planned exit should work.

Income Company OÜ is not a licensed crowdfunding service provider under the EU Crowdfunding Regulation (ECSPR), and we found no investment firm or other financial licence. Finantsinspektsioon, the Estonian financial supervisor, did not list Income among Estonian crowdfunding service providers when we checked. The company's registered main activity is "other activities auxiliary to financial services", and the register lists no activity licence.

Income itself wrote in October 2022 that it was not regulated and expected to apply for a licence once Estonian rules were in place. Independent reviewers in 2025–2026 describe a licence as still pending. We could not confirm whether an application has been filed.

What that means in practice

• No regulator supervises how Income selects lenders, holds client cash or manages conflicts of interest.
• No minimum capital requirement applies — relevant for a company with €94,175 of equity.
• There is no investor compensation scheme and no deposit guarantee. This is not a bank deposit.
• Your protection rests entirely on contracts: the assignment agreement, the buyback, the junior share and the pledges.

We previously listed Income as ECSPR-licensed. That was wrong, and we have corrected it.

1. 1Lender failure. The largest risk. ClickCash shows that recovery can be slow and partial, even with a buffer.
2. 2Concentration. ITF Group and Danarupiah made up about 69% of 2025 listings; a problem at either would matter far more than ClickCash did.
3. 3Platform risk without a licence. Income is loss-making, thinly capitalised and unsupervised. If it failed, you would depend on contracts and whatever arrangements exist for client money.
4. 4Enforcement risk. The buffer depends on taking over loan books in Indonesia, Bulgaria, Kosovo and other jurisdictions. Income itself chose not to enforce in the ClickCash case because of cost.
5. 5Liquidity. No secondary market; early buyback only on selected loans.
6. 6Emerging-market and regulatory risk. Several lenders operate in high-cost consumer credit in markets where rules and currencies can change quickly.

These are not bank deposits. Size an Income position so that a year-long freeze on your largest lender would be uncomfortable but not damaging.

Income is most often weighed against Debitum, and the choice is close. Both sit above 11% on average returns and both publish a useful amount about their lenders. Debitum lends to businesses and holds a Latvian investment firm licence from Latvijas Banka with access to the €20,000 compensation scheme; Income lends mainly to consumers through about a dozen non-bank lenders and relies on its cash-flow buffer rather than regulation.

The loan types and lenders barely overlap, so if you already hold one, the other is more a reasonable second position than a replacement. The trade-off: Debitum has the licence but, in 2026, most of its book sits with a single forestry issuer; Income has spread lenders but no supervisor. Compare them at Debitum vs Income Marketplace and read our Debitum review.

This is general information, not tax advice. How income from Income Marketplace is taxed depends on your country of tax residence.

Income does not withhold tax on interest, according to independent reviews of the platform, so you receive interest gross and must declare it yourself. A yearly tax report can be downloaded from the account dashboard.

The tax treatment of interest from assigned loan claims, and of losses on suspended lenders such as ClickCash, differs between countries. Some tax authorities treat it as interest income, others as capital income, and the rules on deducting losses vary. Speak to a tax adviser in your country of residence before you file.