Opening a "Lender" account on PretUp is a straightforward and free process. During registration, provide necessary personal details such as name, phone number, and email. You'll be prompted to upload two valid identification documents, a recent proof of address, and your bank details (RIB). These documents are crucial for funding your PretUp account and for any future withdrawals.

PretUp's own analysts assess each application - there is no bank or external scorer. The published method examines governance and ownership, economic performance and forecasts, financial structure, and the project's feasibility. Hard filters apply: French-registered businesses with over EUR 100,000 turnover and two closed financial years, with exceptions for business creations and takeovers; auto-entrepreneurs and property-holding companies are excluded. The analysis produces a grade from A+ (very low risk) to D (high risk) that sets the interest rate via published grids. What is missing: PretUp does not disclose how many applicants it rejects, nor how each grade has actually performed, so the scale's accuracy cannot be checked from outside.

Moderate and thematic - no scandal. Trustpilot sits around 4.0 out of 5 on roughly 830 reviews . Recurring complaints: money locked with no early exit; clusters of failures among loans from particular years - PretUp's own table shows 8.06% of 2018 loans and 7.02% of 2022 loans defaulted; slow recoveries; and projects filling within hours, effectively forcing use of the auto-invest tool. One documented investor account: EUR 140 across seven loans from 2019 produced EUR 9 of interest and EUR 9 of capital lost after two years. Counterweight: on the Finary forum in 2023, PretUp was the only French crowdlending platform drawing consistently positive comment. No AMF sanction, no fraud allegation, no insolvency - the platform sits on the regulator's white list.

Founder Fabien Michel, an entrepreneur with over 25 years' experience, created PretUp in Nancy in 2015 and remains president. Pierrick Richet was appointed managing director in December 2025 - a significant recent change with no published biography. The team is small: six to nine employees managing both PretUp's live loans and the old Unilend book acquired from liquidation in 2018. No credit analysts, risk officers or compliance staff are named publicly, and the shareholder list sits behind register paywalls; the platform historically belonged to the Mentor group around Partners Finances, which one source says it left in February 2026.

Unilend is the brand PretUp bought out of liquidation in December 2018 and has wound down ever since - PretUp itself is lending normally, with record volume in 2025

PretUp watches borrowers through automatic alerts from a commercial credit-information service and acts quickly on paper: a formal demand letter within seven days of a missed payment, then court recovery through a bailiff if contact fails. If the borrower enters insolvency proceedings, PretUp files lenders' claims - but lenders rank behind employees and the tax office. Security is enforced deal by deal: directors' personal guarantees, mortgages, pledges. There is no guarantee fund and no buyback; an old insurance scheme covering half of remaining instalments was discontinued years ago, and the 'PretUp Protect' scheme mentioned by some review sites appears nowhere on PretUp's own pages.

Nothing, for normal use. The terms say ordinary operations are free - investing, repayments, and up to five withdrawals a year; more withdrawals than that can be charged. There is no entry, management or exit fee, and the Boost auto-invest tool is free. Tax is the real deduction: PretUp withholds at source monthly - its FAQ states 31.4% - so interest arrives net. Borrowers pay the platform: a 5% success commission, a EUR 250 file fee and 1% a year on what remains owed. Your true costs are the locked-in term with no exit, and the roughly 1.85 points of yearly return that losses have historically consumed.