Mintos Raises 2M from Skillion Ventures

Latvian p2p lending marketplace Mintos has raised 2M EUR from VC Skillion Ventures in Riga. The p2p lending service was launched a year ago and lists loans from several loan originators. The loan types include mortgage loans, secured car loans, business loans, personal loans and invoices finance. The majority of the retail investors resides in Latvia, Germany and UK.The investors financed a cumulative loan volume of over 16M EUR since launch.

The loans are currently to borrowers in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Georgia. Mintos CEO Martins Sulte plans to add loans in the markets of the Czech Republic and Poland next.

“Traditionally, non-bank lenders have financed their loans from their balance sheets. Now, with the help of Mintos, non-bank lenders have the opportunity to use the peer-to-peer lending model to diversify methods of financing loans. For investors, Mintos provides the chance to gain access to loans that were previously accessible to a very limited number of investors, or practically inaccessible at all,” says peer-to-peer lending marketplace Mintos co-founder and CEO Martins Sulte.

“We have fundamentally changed the model of peer-to-peer lending. Before, non-bank lenders that wanted to use the peer-to-peer lending model to fund loans were forced to each create their own investor-facing platforms — now, non-bank lenders can join the Mintos platform. This means non-bank lenders no longer have to spend huge amounts to create technology solutions and market their platforms to investors, instead they can focus on what they do best – originating loans,” clarifies Martins Sulte.

Mintos will use the seed funding to invest in product development, significantly expand the team, and accelerate growth in Europe by attracting more non-bank lenders to the platform.