The Swaper platform has been around since 2016 and is one of the smaller to medium-sized P2P platforms in Europe, with approximately €189 million in loans brokered.

Swaper offers an annual return of 14% p.a. on all loans. With the loyalty bonus, often called VIP status, even a return of 16% p.a. is possible. For this you have to deposit 5,000 € and invest for at least 3 months.

• Introducing Swaper as a P2P platform
• How P2P loans are offered on Swaper
• Experiences with Swaper as P2P platform
• Advantages and disadvantages of Swaper
• Register as an investor on Swaper
• Deposits and withdrawals on Swaper
• Investing in P2P loans on Swaper
• Risks of investing on Swaper
• Paying taxes on income from P2P lending on Swaper
• Start investing on Swaper now

Introducing Swaper as a P2P platform

Swaper offers P2P loans made by the platform's founding company, Wandoo Finance Group.

Swaper (Swaper Platform OÜ) is part of the Wandoo Finance Group and was launched in October 2016 to enable European investors to invest in unsecured consumer loans in Central and Eastern Europe. Currently, investors can invest in loans from Poland, Spain and Denmark. Poland and Spain are the platform's core markets.

Swaper's CEO is Indrek Puolokainen and the platform is based in Tallinn, Estonia. Swaper is not regulated by any supervisory authority (January 2021).

Who can invest on Swaper?

As a private investor, you must be at least 18 years old, a resident of the EU or the European Economic Area (EEA) and have a valid bank account in the EU or EEA to invest on Swaper. Currently, the platform does not accept investors from Poland and private investors from Estonia (as of February 2021).

Companies can invest on Swaper if they provide additional anti-money laundering protection information, such as their registration documents, beneficial owner information, legal representative identification, and other individually required information.

How of P2P loans are offered on Swaper

P2P loans that are offered on Swaper are provided by the founding company the Wandoo Finance Group.

Wandoo Finance Group is a fintech company that has been around since 2016. The group offers a variety of financial services. These include unsecured consumer loans in Poland, Spain, Denmark and Russia.

On Swaper, only consumer loans from Denmark, Poland and Spain are currently offered to P2P investors. All loans are issued with a buyback guarantee.

Example: Obtaining a loan by Wandoo Finance Group

You can see how Wandoo Finance Group grants loans on their website. Here is an example from their Polish website.

Experiences with Swaper as P2P platform

Swaper is rather one of the newcomers among P2P platforms and has been offering loans only since 2016. Wandoo Finance Group was founded in the same year.

The platform has grown strongly in recent years and has mediated a loan volume of almost €190 million since its inception.

In the same period, Swaper has paid out over €2.8 million in interest to investors.

Unfortunately, Swaper does not provide more detailed information on defaults or other statistics on their website. At the beginning of the Corona crisis, they communicated very regularly and sometimes reported weekly on their blog. Currently, they have moved to monthly reporting. This regular and customer-friendly communication was seen as very positive.

According to our research, user experiences have been throughout positive.

How did Swaper do during the Corona crisis?

Swaper came through the Corona crisis well. Total investments and interest grew less at the beginning of the Corona crisis (March - June), as you can see in the graphs by the slightly flattened line.

According to Swaper's own statements, there were no significant defaults or other precarious situations on the platform. However, it was observed that some loans experienced delays due to payment difficulties.

To the surprise of many investors, Swaper even increased interest rates by 2% p.a. to 14% p.a. to attract more investors.

Swaper reacted very quickly to the crisis by cutting costs and reducing expenses. During the crisis, Swaper was also confronted with new regulatory conditions in Poland and Spain, which Swaper was able to meet.

Advantages and disadvantages of Swaper

Register as an investor with Swaper

You can sign up on Swaper in just 4 steps:

1. Register as investor

You can register via the menu item "Sign up". Then enter your email address and phone number, and choose a password.

2. Enter personal information

In the next step you enter your personal information like name, address, date of birth and passport number and choose between EUR and GBP as currency. If you have a promo code, do not forget to enter it.

3. Provide financial data

In the third step you have to answer some questions about your finances. For example, where your invested capital comes from or your annual household income after taxes, living expenses or other obligations.

After that, legal questions about your tax residence and politically exposed persons need to be answered.

4. Verify identity and account

In the last step you have to confirm your identity.

You can also skip this step if you want to check out the platform first. If you want to invest later, you can simply do the verification then.

To verify your identity, you will need a photo of your ID or passport (both sides) and a bill from a government agency, utility or financial institution showing your name, address and a date. When your documents are approved, you will receive an email confirming that you have been successfully identified.

To verify your account on Swaper, you only need to make a first deposit to your account.

Deposits and withdrawals on Swaper

Deposits and withdrawals on Swaper are managed through a central account. To assign the deposits to different users, the purpose of the transfer is used.

Deposit money

To deposit money to your account, click on the button "Deposit money" on the pages "Overview" or "My profile".

Here you can see information you have to enter in order to transfer money to your account.

Swaper needs up to 2 business days to allocate your deposit to your account. Most of the time the amount will be credited to your account after only one business day.

Withdraw money

To withdraw your money, select "Withdraw money" on the details page or on your profile.

Withdrawals are processed within 10 business days and can be made from an amount of 10 euros.

Investing in P2P loans on Swaper

Swaper offers you the possibility to invest in P2P loans manually or automatically via the Auto Invest function.

Investing via Auto Invest

With the Auto Invest feature, you can create multiple Auto-Invest portfolios and invest automatically.

You can create a new Auto Invest portfolio on the overview.

First you specify the portfolio size and portfolio term. On the right side of the screen Swaper will show you the expected return.

After that you can choose a name for your portfolio. If you want to create multiple portfolios, it is best to choose something meaningful that describes the strategy of the portfolio, for example "conservative" or "risky".

When you click on "Create Portfolio", your first portfolio will be created.

But you can also make further settings by clicking on "more options". Then you can make additional settings like:

• Interest rate
• Amount per loan
• Loan term
• Minimum account balance
• Countries
• Whether you want to invest in delayed or extended loans

When you click on "Create portfolio", you will see the new Auto Invest portfolio in your overview. The status will change to "investing". However, it may take a few days until the first investments are made.

How to create the Auto Invest and set it up correctly is described in detail in this article.

Manual investing

You can invest in your own selected loans on Swaper by filtering the available loans.

However, this is not recommended, as manual selection is very time-consuming. Since you should diversify your investments to reduce your risk, you would have to manually select hundreds of loans on a regular basis.

For example, if you spread an investment of €500 over loans of €10 each with a term of about 30 days, you would have to select 600 loans per year.

In addition, the loans on Swaper seem to be very sought after. New loans are often bought up very quickly by the other Auto Invest portfolios, after which there is nothing left for you.

What returns can investors expect on Swaper?

On Swaper, all loans are offered at an annual rate of 14% p.a.

With the loyalty bonus you can get an additional return of 2% p.a. and reach a total of 16% p.a. The condition is that you invest more than €5,000 within 3 months.

What costs and fees do investors have to pay on Swaper?

The platform Swaper is currently free of charge for investors (Feb 2021).

Can I select individual loans on Swaper?

Yes, this is possible. You can filter the loans and select individual loans in which you want to invest.

Is there a secondary market on Swaper?

Yes, there is a simple secondary market. Swaper buys the loans back from you and then re-issues them on the primary market (initial issuance).

With the secondary market, the platform gives you the opportunity to receive your money in the short term. However, you can't sell cheap loans or good performing loans more expensive on the market.

Is there a Swaper app?

Yes. Swaper offers a user-friendly app. The app offers almost all the same features as the website.

You can invest manually or automatically through the app. In the app you can find an overview of your investments and deposits. You can also easily manage your personal details and notifications in the app.

Risks of investing on Swaper

Investing on Swaper comes with risks. The platform arranges short and long-term consumer loans in Denmark, Poland, and Spain, which may default.

There is also a possibility that the platform or the loan originator, Wandoo Finance Group, could go bankrupt. In our P2P lending guide, we have explained what risks you have to expect when investing in P2P loans.

How reputable is Swaper?

Swaper has been on the market since 2016 and has mediated more than €190 million in loans since then. To operate a dubious platform over such a long period of time and to broker almost €200 million in loans is not possible in our opinion. Therefore, we would basically classify Swaper as reputable.

What are the default rates on Swaper?

Swaper does not provide any information on default rates.

Practically, no loans defaulted because of the buyback guarantees. On comparable platforms, default rates are between 5% - 10%. We assume that default rates on Swaper are similar.

How does the buyback guarantee work on Swaper?

All loans on Swaper are issued with buyback guarantees.

Of course, the buyback guarantee is only as secure as the loan provider itself. On Swaper there is in fact only one loan originator, Wandoo Finance Group. If Wandoo itself gets into financial difficulties, the group will certainly not be able to honor its guarantees. In no case should you blindly rely on the buyback guarantees on Swaper.

Are the loans on Swaper protected by the deposit insurance?

Paying taxes on income from P2P lending on Swaper

Swaper assists its investors in taxing their interest income by providing an income certificate.

Prepare tax return on Swaper

Under the menu item "My profile" you will find the section "Income certificate".

Here you can download a certificate for the last calendar years but also for individual periods at any time.

Start investing on Swaper now

If we could arouse your interest in Swaper, you should register as an investor on the platform. Only by making your own experience you can ultimately determine for whether you like the platform.