Hive5 Update October 2026: €3,537 Invested, 13.31% Return & the Secondary Market Is Finally Here

Time for a new Hive5 update. I am now invested with more than €3,500 on the Croatian P2P platform – and there is some genuinely exciting news: Hive5 has finally launched a secondary market. That is exactly what I was still wishing for in my last report. In this post we take a detailed look at my investment, the new secondary market, my Auto Invest and the current cashback.

As always, the most important thing first: this is not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy, just my personal opinion and experience. P2P loans are high-risk – only invest money you could afford to lose entirely, and make your own decisions. The Hive5 link is a referral link: if you use it, I receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you.

My Hive5 account in numbers

This is what my dashboard looks like (recorded on 4 October 2026):

• Account balance: €3,537.11 – fully invested, €0.00 available
• Profit: €235.11
• Net annual return: 13.31% – definitely very solid
• Active loans: 77 – and all on time: each of the three delay buckets (1–15, 16–30 and 31–60 days) shows a 0

So far everything has run smoothly for me on Hive5. I have not had a single delay. That is of course no guarantee that it will always stay that way – but my experience here has been very good so far.

For comparison: this is how things looked in my September update – and how they look today:

In a good three weeks, €34.68 of interest has been added, I have deposited a fresh €100, and the net annual return has risen from 12.81% to 13.31%.

New: Hive5 finally has a secondary market

Now for the actual news. On 29 September 2026 Hive5 launched a secondary market – it did not have one before. You find it by going to "Investment" and opening the "Secondary market" tab:

Why does a secondary market matter so much? It adds liquidity. Until now we were always tied to the loan terms on Hive5 – and you can see it in the screenshot: there are loans that still run for 24 months. Without a secondary market there is no way to exit early. Now there is:

• As a seller you can sell your loans early – at a discount, for example, if it needs to be quick.
• As a buyer you can, in theory, also pick up bargains on the secondary market and secure a bit of extra return.

There is not much going on yet, though:

There are three pages of listings. In the video I estimate "maybe 30 per page, so 90 loans" – counted exactly, the first page holds 50 listings, so there were between 101 and 150 in total when I recorded. The first page is almost entirely long-term loans from Credilink and Firmeo with 19 to 24 months remaining and 14 to 16% interest.

And the bargains? On the first page exactly three listings were priced below their investment value: €733.94 for €732.50, €180.21 for €180.00 and €23.12 for €23.00. Those are discounts of a few tenths of a percent – all other listings were at face value. So do not expect big discounts for now. Still: good to see that the whole thing works.

The rules at a glance

In the video I explain the principle; here are the rules as Hive5 published them at launch:

• Price: you sell at the outstanding principal or at a discount of up to 50%. A premium is not possible – the price can never exceed the outstanding principal.
• Full investments only: partial sales are not available at launch.
• 30 days: that is how long a listing stays active; after that you can renew it. You can change the price or cancel until someone has bought.
• Manual purchases only: Auto Invest does not buy secondary-market listings.
• Buyback stays: the buyer takes over the repayment schedule and the buyback claim.
• Interest: payments from the sale onwards go to the buyer – including interest that had accrued but not yet been paid.
• Fees: according to Hive5, listing, buying and selling on the secondary market are free.

The most important point: a sale is not guaranteed. It always takes another investor to buy your loan – even at a discount. And if you are still part of the 3% new-customer promotion from August and September: according to Hive5, that cashback is not paid for an investment you sell.

My portfolio: short-term loans – and the new "Sell" button

My portfolio shows that I have so far focused entirely on short-term loans – 90 days at most:

• Credilink – Business: currently 14% interest, 86 days remaining when I recorded
• Firmeo – Business: 13.5% interest
• plus a few loans from FinJet – Business at 13.5%

Everything runs through Auto Invest, and everything is short-term – precisely because of liquidity.

What is new is the column on the far right: every row now has a "Sell" button. If I want to exit early, I click it, set a price and list the loan. In the screenshot you can see the opened price field – I did not submit the sale, of course.

In theory I could now also invest in long-term loans and pass them on via the secondary market if needed. I will probably still focus on the short-term loans, though. Even if long-term loans pay more and there is now a secondary market: that is no guarantee that someone will actually buy my loan there. Nevertheless, it is a feature I have wanted for a long time – good that Hive5 has introduced it.

Otherwise things are running: under "Finished investments" there are now five pages of loans that have already been repaid in full. I have never had a delay among them. But as I keep saying: it runs until it doesn't. If something bad happens one day, I will keep you posted.

Auto Invest is a must – my settings

What I would recommend to everyone, especially if you focus on short-term loans: set up Auto Invest on Hive5. With terms of 90 days at most – some are shorter – I receive repayments almost daily, sometimes interest, sometimes the full principal. It would be really annoying to reinvest by hand every time with 77 loans.

This is my strategy:

• Portfolio size (limit): €10,000
• Amount per loan: €10 to €50
• Term: 10 to 90 days
• Interest rate: 12 to 18% (in the video I accidentally say "days" at this point – I mean percent)
• Lenders: all selected for now
• Reinvest: on

When I recorded, two strategies were briefly running in parallel: an older one with terms of 10 to 120 days and the new one with 10 to 90 days. I deleted the older one in the video via "CANCEL", which leaves the strategy from the screenshot. The loans already bought simply keep running.

Three clarifications:

• The €10,000 is the limit of the strategy, not my target for the platform. My upper limit for Hive5 is €5,000 – more on that below.
• According to Hive5, an existing strategy cannot currently be edited. If you want to change something, you create a new one and stop or delete the old one. "CANCEL" deletes the strategy permanently.
• In my list of lenders, "Linqo – Business" appears alongside Credilink, FinJet and Firmeo. Hive5's public lender page still only describes the three known lenders.

1% cashback in the first 90 days

If you are interested in Hive5: through my Hive5 link* you can secure 1% cashback on your investments in the first 90 days.

To put it in context:

• The 1% in the first 90 days are my partner terms – they run via the link. On the Hive5 site itself you will not find a separate notice about it after clicking.
• Publicly, Hive5 describes the partner-link cashback like this: 1% for new customers, capped at €300 per client.
• The 3% new-customer promotion I mentioned in the September update ended on 30 September 2026. So there is currently no public cashback for everyone on Hive5 – you only get the 1% cashback through a partner link.

Still, check the current terms directly with Hive5 before you start; conditions can change.

For transparency: this is a referral link. If you sign up through it, I receive a small commission – at no extra cost to you. On the contrary: you get an additional cashback you would not otherwise receive, and you support my work.

Taxes: Hive5 does not withhold anything

One more topic a few of you asked about: taxes. Hive5 does not pay anything to the German tax office automatically – like pretty much every P2P platform. Hive5 is based in Croatia, and we are responsible ourselves for declaring the interest correctly: in the German tax return via Anlage KAP – or you hand the documents to your tax adviser.

You find the numbers under "Account statement":

You select the period you need and see exactly how much interest you received in the "Interest received" line – €235.11 for me so far. Below that you can download the data as an Excel or CSV file and transfer it. Getting an overview of how much interest you received in which year really is simple. We just have to remember to declare it.

Two additions: according to Hive5 there is also a separate "Tax report" in the account settings. And: this is not tax advice – if in doubt, ask your tax adviser.

Incidentally, the account statement nicely shows what Auto Invest does: €3,302 of deposits have turned into €10,631.92 of investments over time, because €7,094.81 of repaid principal was reinvested again and again.

How safe is Hive5?

For everything that is going well – the one thing you absolutely have to keep in mind: Hive5 is not a regulated platform, at least not yet.

• No regulation. Hive5 says so itself: the platform does not operate under a financial services licence. The operator is Hive5 marketplace d.o.o., based in Zagreb, Croatia. Hive5 attributes this to its business model as a marketplace for loan claims and says it is reviewing licensing options – but licence type, jurisdiction and timeline are open. I hope something happens there in the future. Until then: no financial supervision of the platform, no deposit insurance, no investor compensation scheme.
• Buyback obligation – but no guarantee. If a payment is more than 60 calendar days overdue, the lender must repurchase the claim including accrued interest. That helps on top. But the obligation is only worth as much as the lender's ability to pay.
• Lenders from one group. The publicly described lenders – FinJet (Spain), Credilink (Romania) and Firmeo (Poland) – all belong to Hive Finance Group. In the video I say that further loan originators have come on board in recent months; more precisely: the most recent addition on Hive5's lender page is Firmeo in October 2025, and what is new in my Auto Invest is the entry "Linqo – Business".
• The secondary market is not an emergency exit. It helps, but a sale is not guaranteed.

Wherever you get 14%, 15% or more in returns, there are always risks – on Hive5 it currently goes up to 16% for a 24-month term. Loans can default, and a platform can fail completely too. You need to be aware of that.

My plan and verdict

Overall I am very happy with Hive5 so far. I will probably top the platform up to €5,000 and deposit a small amount every month for that – currently, I think, €100 or €200:

There is still €1,462.89 to go. The €5,000 is my upper limit for unregulated platforms – it will not become more on Hive5 for now. A practical side effect: €5,000 is where Hive5's loyalty programme starts with the Navigator level (+0.50%). According to Hive5 the programme has had five levels since 5 October 2026; the bonus applies automatically once you have been an investor for more than 90 days and your active portfolio exceeds €5,000. You can see how Hive5 fits into my overall P2P portfolio in the P2P Portfolio Update October 2026.

Bottom line: it is running and the return is right – but as I said, it always runs until it doesn't. In my opinion Hive5 is on a good path: very transparent, and now the secondary market is finally here too. Things really are moving. The risks remain – no regulation, no deposit insurance, credit risk despite the buyback obligation – and that is exactly why this stays a clearly limited position.

If you want to try Hive5 yourself, feel free to use my link for the 1% cashback: go to Hive5 through my link*.

How is Hive5 going for you? What has your experience been so far, have you tried the platform yet? Let me know in the comments under the video.

Links marked with * are partner links. If you invest through them, you support my work – at no extra cost to you. Thank you!