Maclear P2P: 10 Things to Know Before You Invest (2026)

Maclear in Brief: The 10 Points at a Glance

Maclear reads well on paper: 14 to 16% a year, monthly interest, a Swiss company, collateral behind every loan. The homepage counter shows over 52,000 investors, more than €145 million funded and over €50 million repaid, with one default and zero late loans. Trustpilot rates it 4.6 out of 5 from over 950 reviews, on a claimed profile with a paid Trustpilot subscription.

None of that tells you what happens to your money in the details. We invest on Maclear ourselves and went through the help centre, the terms, the 2024 annual report and the default write-up for this checklist. One point applies to all ten below: P2P lending is not a savings product, no deposit guarantee scheme applies, and a total loss of the invested capital is possible. The big picture is in our Maclear review, the risk side in Is Maclear safe?.

We also know what the service looks like from the inside. Support runs through an in-platform chatbot and email to support@maclear.ch, there is no live chat with a human, and answers at weekends can take 24 to 48 hours. Account managers exist as well: after our account had sat idle, one emailed us and offered a portfolio review by call, WhatsApp or Telegram. That is a service conversation rather than advice, and not something every account necessarily gets.

The 10 Points in One Table

Maclear Review in Video

Our review video covers the bonuses, the four security layers, the 2025 default, the fees and our verdict in about nine minutes.

More English P2P reviews land on our channel first.

1. PolyReg Membership Is Not a Banking Licence

Maclear AG is based in Wallisellen near Zurich and is a member of PolyReg, a self-regulatory organisation (SRO) supervised by FINMA, the Swiss financial regulator. Membership puts Maclear under anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer rules as a financial intermediary. Maclear says it commissions regular independent audits from Grant Thornton AG, and its own transparency post is candid that Swiss regulation does not make those audits mandatory. Maclear dates one of them publicly, a compliance audit in November 2024.

What it is not: a FINMA licence, a banking licence or deposit protection. Maclear's own FAQ says investor funds are not covered by any government deposit guarantee scheme.

For EU residents there is a second layer. Switzerland is a third country outside the EU, so Maclear holds no ECSP crowdfunding licence and is not registered with any EU supervisor. Investing is legal, but your national regulator has no say if something goes wrong. The company was founded in 2020 according to its FAQ and funded its first project in 2023, so the track record is roughly three years. What the Swiss framework covers in practice, and what those audits do and do not check, we take apart in Is Maclear safe?.

2. Interest Runs at 14 to 16% and Starts Only at Funded

The homepage says "up to 15.6%". Maclear's interest-rate FAQ is more precise: fixed annual rates of 14 to 16% on base projects, set by the borrower's risk score, up to 16.5% with the loyalty bonus.

The rate is fixed once the project reaches Funded, and that is also when interest starts. Maclear says this can take up to ten business days after you confirm, because fundraising and pre-financing come first. Money in Reserved earns nothing, idle balance earns nothing. On a platform where projects fill within hours and the next one may take days, this cash drag pulls your real return below the project APR.

Two mechanics soften it. Maclear says most investors receive their first interest payment within 30 to 40 days of investing, depending on how fast the project reaches its target, and monthly after that. And if a borrower repays early, Maclear pays interest for the actual term with a minimum of three months: a loan repaid after two months still pays three. Our own dashboard shows the scale: €1,045 in active investments at 14.54% produce an expected €12.59 a month, while the €42.59 balance beside it earns zero.

3. The Bonus Stack and the €500 Trap

Maclear runs five euro-denominated bonus programmes plus a four-league leaderboard since July 2026. Everything stacks, but not everything is cash:

• •€15 welcome bonus: first investment of at least €50 within 7 days of registration (not of KYC), primary market only, credited as a bonus position in the same project.
• •€30 per €500: Maclear takes the full amount you have invested in one project on the primary market and rounds it down to complete €500 blocks, so a later top-up in the same project counts as well. Cap €300 per project for leagues below Platinum, a ceiling that Maclear's leaderboard FAQ puts at €1,800 for Platinum members, unlimited projects, also credited as a bonus position.
• •3% cashback: only with registration via a referral link or code, on primary-market investments of €50 or more in the first 90 days, paid as cash when the project reaches Funded, no cap. It is the new-user side of Maclear's own 3+3 referral programme: any referral link unlocks it, without one you get nothing.
• •Loyalty bonus: +1.5% APR from a €5,000 active portfolio, +2% from €15,000, +2.5% from €40,000, +3% from €75,000, fixed at funding.

The trap is in the €30 programme, and it is the partial block. Maclear pays nothing on the remainder above a full block, so €999 in a project earns exactly one €30 credit, the same as €500, and €490 earns nothing at all. Only native primary-market investments count towards the blocks; buying into the same project on the secondary market does not.

The maths for a new investor via referral link, first project: €500 earns €60, made up of the €30 block, €15 cashback and the €15 welcome bonus. Those are one-off amounts, not annual returns. The larger tickets, the league caps and every edge case are worked through in our Maclear bonus guide.

4. Every Loan Is Secured, but Check the LTV Band

Collateral on Maclear means real estate, business equipment, machinery, vehicles, inventory or personal guarantees from the owners, held by Maclear as collateral agent on behalf of all investors. "Every loan is secured" is true and says nothing about how far the security reaches. That is what the loan-to-value ratio on each project page is for.

Maclear defines LTV = loan amount divided by collateral value and publishes four risk bands: 40 to 80% low risk, 80 to 120% moderate, 120 to 160% elevated, 160 to 200% high risk, where Maclear itself writes that enforcement might not fully cover the capital if asset values fall. Above 100% the loan is bigger than the security behind it, and those bands are a regular category rather than an exception. The project in the screenshot is rated A with an LTV of 98%.

Ratings run from AAA to D over ten grades, updated quarterly. One conflict of interest belongs here: Maclear rates the borrower, lists the project and earns a 3 to 6% borrower commission per listing. Read the LTV yourself rather than trusting the letter alone. How the scoring is put together, and how far the collateral actually reached in the one case that has been tested, sits in our Maclear safety check.

5. The Provision Fund Covers Interest Only

Maclear pays 2% of every successfully funded project into the fund, keeps it on a segregated bank account and has it audited by Grant Thornton AG, according to its provision fund FAQ. From day 3 of a payment delay it covers the outstanding interest, within available funds. Capital is a different matter: the fund page in the screenshot above says plainly that this is not an insurance scheme and does not legally guarantee full repayment of principal.

On the size, Maclear's own blog post put the fund at €2 million in May 2026 and was last updated in July 2026, while the FAQ gives no figure and points to the balance published inside the platform, which Maclear says it updates regularly. The fund has never been activated, not even during the 2025 default.

From day 3 onwards the process escalates in fixed steps, through out-of-court collection and legal proceedings to a transfer of the claims to Maclear as main creditor, and you cannot take action against a borrower yourself. We walk through that chain day by day in the safety article.

6. One Default in 1,967 Projects

In its July 2026 investor update Maclear reported 1,967 funded projects; the homepage shows 1 default, 0 late loans. That single case is the only real-world test of the recovery process so far.

Vibroedil S.R.L., an Italian borrower with a €150,000 loan, entered insolvency proceedings in July 2025. Rather than sit through a long insolvency process, Maclear negotiated a private repayment agreement, informed investors once the legal status was confirmed and published the write-up in October 2025. Investors received 100% of their principal. We pull that case apart step by step, including what it does and does not prove about the recovery process, in our risk breakdown.

Two caveats belong next to that record. A default rate this low is unusually good and statistically young: the history starts in 2023 and contains no full economic cycle. Concentration is the second one. In July 2026 a single project, ULTIMA FINANCE, took 36.24% of the month's funded volume, so twenty €50 tickets are not twenty borrowers if AutoInvest keeps landing in the same one. More on that in 5 Maclear mistakes.

7. Negative Equity in the 2024 Annual Report

Critical reviews lead with this, and the numbers are real. Maclear published its 2024 annual report on 3 June 2026, about 17 months after the balance sheet date. Maclear's position on the timing is that a private Swiss company is not obliged to publish accounts at all and that it does so voluntarily. Total equity at the end of 2024 stood at CHF −87,026, negative for the second year in a row.

One line matters most if you came for the bonuses: in 2024 Maclear received CHF 464,322 in interest from borrowers and paid CHF 827,849 to investors in interest and bonuses. The difference came from Maclear's commission income. The bonus stack in point 3 is subsidised from platform funds and depends on the platform continuing to grow.

Maclear's side: in an accompanying letter, CFO and co-founder Aleksandr Lang addresses the negative equity directly, calls it the cost of a deliberate growth strategy and expects positive equity by the end of 2025, which is not audited. Your loan claims are not on Maclear's balance sheet, they belong to you, and platform risk is a separate question from borrower risk. We go through the rest of the profit and loss statement and what a negative equity line means for a young platform in Is Maclear safe?.

8. Secondary Market: 2.5% Seller Fee, No Guaranteed Exit

Selling before maturity costs the seller 2.5% of the transaction; buyers pay nothing. Minimum transaction €30, listings expire after 14 days, discounts up to 50% of face value, never a premium. Maclear counts the fee as one of its three revenue sources and says these commissions are to flow into the provision fund going forward. The percentage lives in the help centre, not in the terms and conditions.

Maclear's liquidity data is strong: a median of around three hours from listing to sale, and a 100% sell-through rate across the ten monthly cohorts from June 2025 to March 2026. Maclear adds that it does not guarantee a listed position will sell. Growth-phase figures, not stress-phase figures.

Three restrictions cost people money. Interest accrued but unpaid at the time of sale passes to the buyer. Positions in a delayed or defaulted project cannot be listed, so the exit closes exactly when you would want it. And bonus positions from the €15 and €30 programmes, plus any investment made with a promo code, cannot be sold at all.

9. Form A, AutoInvest Priority and Orders You Cannot Cancel

KYC runs through Sumsub and typically takes up to ten minutes. Proof of address is the second document, and both have to be through before you can deposit money. Form A, the one-time Swiss declaration that you are the beneficial owner of the funds, comes later: Maclear emails it after your first investment, and you e-sign it via Skribble. Until it is signed you stay capped at that one investment, AutoInvest remains locked and secondary-market selling is unavailable, so deal with the email quickly.

AutoInvest matters even if you prefer picking projects by hand, because strategies are served before manual investors when a project opens, and Maclear writes that projects can fill within hours. Up to ten strategies, with filters for interest range, term, risk level, country, project type and LTV. A strategy only picks up projects that go live after activation.

Before you switch it on: an executed AutoInvest order cannot be cancelled or reversed; to stop future allocations you deactivate the strategy. AutoInvest qualifies for every bonus, and since the €30 blocks count the total per project, several smaller allocations into the same project add up. Our sign-up guide covers registration, Form A, the first deposit and the first investment screen by screen.

10. Account Hygiene: IBAN, Bank Details and Tax Statement

Deposits run exclusively through Narvi Bank since April 2025. After a one-time activation you get a personal virtual IBAN and SEPA Instant deposits arrive within minutes, free, from an account in your own name. Withdrawals take one to two business days of processing plus the bank transfer, minimum €50, only to a verified IBAN in the same name as your Maclear account.

Keep your bank details current. If Maclear ever closes, active loan claims remain yours and uninvested balance is returned to your verified account. If the transfer fails and you do not provide updated details within 30 calendar days of the request, Maclear may dispose of the funds and your claim lapses. The full closure clause, and what it means for loans that are still running, is in Is Maclear safe?.

Download the tax statement. No Swiss withholding tax is deducted; you declare the interest in your country of residence under its rules for interest income. The statement sits under Statements, in the Tax tab, with cashback shown as its own line called "Cashback". Ask your national tax authority or a local adviser how to report it.

Pros and Cons for First-Time Maclear Investors

The trade-off comes down to what you get paid for taking on which conditions.

Verdict: What to Take Away

Maclear is a young, fast-growing Swiss platform that publishes its own weak spots: the negative equity, interest paid versus interest earned, the LTV bands, the default write-up. The critical reviews ranking for "Maclear review" are not inventing anything. The question is what you do with the facts.

Our view: the ten points are conditions, not deal-breakers. The two that change your actual return most directly are how much you end up holding in each single project, because that total is what the €30 blocks are counted on, and the LTV band you accept on each project. A rule of thumb often quoted in the P2P community is to keep P2P at no more than 5 to 10% of a portfolio and a single young platform at 1 to 2%, and an emergency fund never belongs in P2P. Whatever you invest, a total loss of that capital remains possible.

If you try Maclear, our referral link unlocks the 3% cashback for 90 days on top of the welcome bonus and the €30 blocks. Read the Maclear review for the full picture first.