Crowdfunding Evolves into Core Financial Infrastructure in Europe

Three years ago, when the European Crowdfunding Service Provider Regulation (ECSPR) came into force, optimism among operators was cautious. We had a passport. We had a framework. What was missing was proof that it worked.

Currently, in early 2026, we have that evidence, and it is messier and more interesting than anyone anticipated.

I manage EvenFi, a crowdlending platform authorized by the CNMV in Spain (license #5), operating in Italy and Spain. From where I am, 2026 is the year European crowdfunding stopped being a regulatory experiment and became a fully-fledged financial infrastructure. Not because everything works. But because failures are as instructive as successes.

The numbers

The number of ECSP platforms authorized in Europe has increased from 159 in 2023 to 254 in the first months of 2026, a 60% increase in three years. The pace of new authorizations is slowing: the easy applications have been made.

What remains are operators in complex jurisdictions, specialized niches, and a growing number of traditional financial institutions looking to crowdfunding as a distribution channel.

France, the largest market on the continent, rebounded to €1.76 billion in 2025 after two years of decline. The rebound matters: French platforms had suffered during the ECSPR transition, and the recovery demonstrates that regulation is no longer a brake on activity.

The cap debate: Crowdfunding went from €5M to €12M

The most important discussion in the sector is the raising of the ECSPR funding cap from €5 million to €12 million per project. At €5 million, crowdfunding is limited to early-stage deals and small-scale SMEs. At €12 million, the door is opened to growth-stage financing, significant real estate projects, and infrastructure deals that currently end up in private placements.

The argument against is investor protection. The argument in favor is that a €5 million cap makes the ECSPR irrelevant for deals that would benefit most from broad investor access. I think the cap should be increased. Not because bigger is always better, but because the current limit pushes serious companies towards less transparent financing channels.

Infrastructural convergence

The most important changes in 2026 aren’t regulatory. They’re structural.

Mintos wants to become a bank

Mintos is Europe’s largest peer-to-peer platform by volume. Founded in Latvia in 2015 as a marketplace connecting loan originators and retail investors, over the years it has expanded its offerings beyond personal loans: today, the platform offers ETFs, bonds, fractional real estate, and, starting in March 2026, cryptocurrency ETPs in partnership with Upvest.

But the most significant move is another: Mintos is pursuing a full banking license from the ECB. It is the first marketplace-to-bank pivot in European crowdlending.

Why would a platform that works well as a marketplace want to become a bank? The answer lies in the numbers.

A banking license provides access to three things a marketplace doesn’t: deposit funding (structurally cheaper than capital raised through marketplaces), access to ECB refinancing operations, and a regulatory status that institutional capital, pension funds, asset managers, and family offices recognize and accept.

Mintos examined its business model, its cost of capital, and decided that being a bank with fintech DNA was more sustainable in the long term than being a fintech that looks like a bank. If licensed (estimated timeline: 12-18 months), Mintos will be able to offer deposit accounts protected by the European guarantee fund for up to €100,000, a huge competitive advantage over other marketplaces.

This won’t be the last conversion. Any lending platform processing significant volumes will eventually ask itself the same question: do we remain a marketplace, or do we become a bank-licensed, on-balance-sheet lender? The economy is pushing toward banks. The culture of most crowdfunding teams is pushing against them. This tension will define the next three years of the industry.

Crowdcube meets the London Stock Exchange

One of the historic problems of equity crowdfunding is liquidity. You invest in a startup through a platform, the startup grows, but your shares remain tied up; there’s no market to sell them.

The only way out is to wait for a takeover, an IPO, or to convince someone to buy your shares privately. For many retail investors, this means waiting years with no certainty.

Crowdcube, the largest British equity crowdfunding platform, has begun to provide a concrete answer to this problem through a partnership with the London Stock Exchange’s PISCES ( Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System ) platform.

PISCES works like this: private companies can organize periodic trading windows for their shares, in an environment regulated by the LSE. It’s not a public listing; it’s an intermittent and controlled mechanism that allows shareholders to sell their shares during predefined sessions.

The first case was Oxford Science Enterprises, an investment vehicle tied to the University of Oxford, made accessible to Crowdcube retail investors through this channel.

Why does it matter? Because it creates a credible path that didn’t exist before: raise capital on a crowdfunding platform, grow the company, then access structured trading on a regulated market, without going through a traditional IPO.

For companies, it’s less expensive and less invasive than a public offering. For investors, it’s the first concrete sign that equity crowdfunding isn’t necessarily an illiquid investment for life.

If this model expands, and there is good reason to believe it will, it could solve the biggest obstacle to the growth of equity crowdfunding in Europe: the lack of exits.

State guarantees open to crowdlending

This is perhaps the most underrated and most important change for the Italian market.

The Guarantee Fund for SMEs is the instrument of Mediocredito Centrale (under the Ministry of the Economy and Finance) that for years has allowed small and medium-sized Italian businesses to access bank credit at better conditions.

It works like this: when a bank grants a loan to an SME that has obtained the Fund’s guarantee, in the event of the borrower’s insolvency, the Italian state covers a significant portion of the capital, typically between 60% and 80% of the loan.

For the bank, this reduces risk and therefore the cost of credit. For the business, it means lower interest rates and access to financing it would otherwise not have.

Until recently, this tool was accessible almost exclusively through traditional banking channels.

A recent decree has changed the rules : platforms authorized as European Crowdfunding Service Providers (ECSPs) can now apply for the SME Fund guarantee for loans intermediated through their platforms.

The implications are profound, on both sides of the deal

For crowdlending investors, the government guarantee radically changes the risk profile. A loan to an SME through crowdlending, without a guarantee, exposes the investor to the full risk of default. With the SME Fund guarantee, a significant portion of the capital is covered by the government in the event of insolvency. This makes crowdlending comparable, and in some cases superior, to many managed savings products in terms of risk/return ratio.

For SMEs seeking financing, crowdlending with a public guarantee becomes a practical alternative to bank lending. It offers faster processing times (weeks instead of months), less internal bureaucracy, and competitive terms, because the public guarantee reduces the risk premium the investor would otherwise require.

For platforms like EvenFi, access to the SME Fund is the missing piece to truly compete with banks in business lending. Not as an alternative to the system, but as an integral part of it. Crowdlending doesn’t replace public guarantees: it uses them. And that’s precisely why the model is sustainable.

At EvenFi, we consider this the most important development of the last two years. Access to government guarantees transforms crowdlending from “alternative finance” or “complementary finance” to “finance.”

What’s not working yet

Despite the ECSPR passport, operating in multiple member states remains costly and complex. Each national authority interprets the regulation differently.

Secondary markets remain the missing piece, with investors committing capital having limited options for early exit.

And there is no centralized repository of data on the performance of ECSPR platforms: default rates, recovery rates, returns, everything is reported on a platform-by-platform basis, in different formats.

ESMA could address this with a standardized reporting framework. It hasn’t. Until it does, the credibility of the sector with institutional capital will remain limited.

What comes next

The €12 million cap will move by the end of 2026. At least 20-30 smaller ECSP platforms will exit the market by 2027, through acquisition or closure. Mintos won’t be the only one applying for a banking license. Institutional capital will arrive gradually, as secondary market infrastructure and data transparency improve.

2026 isn’t the year European crowdfunding arrives. It’s the year it becomes obvious it’s coming.

Diego Dal Cero is CEO of EvenFi, a crowdlending platform that holds the ECSP #5 license from the CNMV (Spain) and operates in Italy and Spain.

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(Featured image by michelle henderson via Unsplash)

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