Best Alternative Lending Companies in South Korea
The 59 best Alternative Lending companies in South Korea in 2026, ranked by funding and momentum. Funding, investors, founders, valuation, tech stack and live signals. Top: People's Fund.
South Korea's Alternative Lending sector is moving fast, and this page ranks the 59 companies we track by disclosed equity funding and recent momentum. Total disclosed capital sits at $495M across the directory, with People's Fund leading at $105M, ShinhanCard close behind at $60M, and Finda at $53M rounding out the top tier. No unicorns yet, but the funding spread tells you the market's still in a competitive build-out phase rather than a winner-take-all consolidation.
Globally, alternative lending is tracking toward meaningful scale, and one recent breakdown captures why practitioners keep returning to the sector's structural appeal: banks leave gaps, and fintechs fill them. South Korea's regulatory environment adds texture here, since tighter consumer credit rules have pushed borrowers toward platform-based lenders faster than many anticipated. The global market was valued at roughly $2.4B in 2023 and is growing at a 14.4% CAGR, which puts the Korean cohort's $495M in useful perspective. Active backers including Korea Investment Holdings, KB Investment, and Shinhan Futures Lab signal that institutional money is already picking sides. I'd watch the mid-tier names closely this quarter.
Ranked: Best Alternative Lending companies in South Korea
| # | Company | Disclosed funding | Last round | Stage | Founder | Founded | Tech stack | Patents & IP focus | Recent signals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | People's Fund P2P marketplace for consumer and business loans | $105M | 41 mo ago | Series C | Joey Kim Founder & CEO | 2015 | — | — | 1 job opening |
| 2 | Bank Salad Online platform offering loan and savings comparison for consumers | $82M | 59 mo ago | Series C | Kim Tae-hoon Founder & CEO | 2012 | SentryZendeskFacebook Login+15 | — | — |
| 3 | Lendit Peer-to-peer lending marketplace | $60M | 60 mo ago | Series C | — | 2015 | SentryVue.jsAmazon Web Services+16 | — | — |
| 4 | ShinhanCard Online platform for consumer loans | $60M | 32 mo ago | Series C | Lim Li CEO | 2002 | Node.jsJavaSocket.io+12 | 35 patents Secure payment card transaction processing and dynamic card data generation | — |
| 5 | Finda Online platform offering financial products comparison solutions | $53M | 35 mo ago | Series C | — | 2016 | Wix eCommerceWixSentry+19 | — | — |
| 6 | 8percent Online platform for consumer loans | $38M | 56 mo ago | Series B | — | 2014 | WordPressMySQLPHP+22 | 4 patents Patents concentrated in computing, sensing & instrumentation | — |
| 7 | Tera Funding Online lending for construction and real estate | $29M | 82 mo ago | Series B | Sung Lee Co-Founder & COO | 2014 | Node.jsFacebook LoginApple Sign-in+21 | — | — |
| 8 | HonestFund B2C marketplace for personal and small business loans | $29M | 30 mo ago | Series C | Sanghoon Seo Founder & CEO | 2015 | Node.jsJavaBootstrap+22 | 6 patents AI-driven credit scoring, recommendation, and voice-based risk assessment systems | — |
| 9 | Korea Rating Information Provider of credit scoring platform for businesses | $15M | 28 mo ago | Series A | Sangwoo Kim CEO | 2021 | — | — | — |
| 10 | Funda Korea based P2P lending platform for retail stores | $11M | 77 mo ago | Series B | — | 2015 | SentryYouTubeVuetify+17 | 2 patents Digital micro‑enterprise lending platforms and electronic payment processing services | — |
| 11 | Allra Financial solutions for small to medium-sized enterprises | $9M | 17 mo ago | Series B | Kim Sang-soo CEO | 2019 | Node.jsReactstyled-components+26 | — | — |
| 12 | Tru Technologies Securities financing and lending platform | $3M | 60 mo ago | Seed | — | 2015 | — | — | — |
| 13 | Canopy Provider of a service enabling employees to access earned wages early | $699K | 8 mo ago | Seed | Andrew Lee Founder & CEO | 2024 | Node.jsNextAuth.jsRadix UI+19 | — | — |
Top 12 Alternative Lending companies in South Korea
#1
Seed · Seoul, Seoul · founded 2024$699Kraised▾
Provider of a service enabling employees to access earned wages early. The service allows workers to withdraw a portion of their already-earned salary before the regular payday. It facilitates immediate access to funds based on hours worked. The service integrates with time-tracking systems to verify employment and calculate available amounts. It aims to provide financial flexibility and reduce reliance on traditional loans.
- Nov 2025Seed$699K
#2
Series B · Seoul, Seoul · founded 2019 · 30 employees$9.1Mraised▾
Financial solutions for small to medium-sized enterprises. The platform provides integrated financial solutions for online small and medium-sized enterprises. It supports financial operations, streamline accounting, and offer real-time financial insights to its clients.
- Jan 2025Series B$9.1M
#3
Series C · Seoul, Seoul · founded 2002$60Mraised▾
Online platform for consumer loans. Its services include credit loans that enable individuals, corporations, and public institutions to pay for goods or services within certain credit limit through credit cards, cash advance services, installment products for the payment of goods and services that customers cannot afford to pay in a lump sum, credit card and disaster loans, and automobile finance leasing services, and more.
- Oct 2023Series C$60M
- Nov 2019Grant (prize money)$295K
#4
Series C · Seoul, Seoul · founded 2015 · 82 employees$29.1Mraised▾
Honest Fund provides unsecured personal loans and small business loans. It offers an alternative financial platform which offers short-term interest rate loans through commercial banks and large financial institutions. It also offers various types of personal credit loans such as real estate PFs, mortgage loans, NPL secured loans and SCF bond investment products.
- Jan 2024Series C$3.8M
- Dec 2018Series B$12M
- Sep 2016Series A$5.3M
- 2015Series A$7.9M
#5
Series C · Seoul, Seoul · founded 2016 · 82 employees$52.8Mraised▾
Online platform offering financial products comparison solutions. It lets user to compare loans, credit cards, saving accounts, and more.
- Jul 2023Series C$37M
- Jan 2021Series B$10.6M
- Jul 2019Series A$3.8M
- Sep 2016Series A$1.2M
#6
Series C · Seoul, Seoul · founded 2015 · 125 employees$105.1Mraised▾
Developer of a lending platform designed to process all loans through a bank-integrated system. The company's platform operates with banks and other financial institutions to ease the lending process and the loan is made available via various third-party applications as well, enabling customers to get a personal loan at a low-interest rate.
#7
Series A · Seoul, Seoul · founded 2021$15Mraised▾
Provider of credit scoring platform for businesses. It offers a platform that enables individual business owners to access credit scores. It offers solutions for credit evaluations based on differentiated data. It offers services such as credit rating confirmation, issuance of credit rating certificates, and more.
- Mar 2024Series A$4.2M
#8
Series C · Seoul, Seoul · founded 2012 · 138 employees$81.9Mraised▾
Online platform offering loan and savings comparison for consumers. It allows its users to compare different types of loans such as credit card loans, personal loans, and savings deposits. It also offers financial tips and recommendations for managing finance and investments, and free genetic testing kit to its users. Its app is available for Android and iOS devices.
- Aug 2021Series C$8.7M
- Jun 2021Series C$22.3M
- Aug 2019Series C$37.1M
- Oct 2018Series B$12.3M
#9
Series C · Seoul, Seoul · founded 2015 · 66 employees$60.3Mraised▾
Peer-to-peer lending marketplace. It enables investors to provide loans to creditworthy borrowers in exchange for interest incomes. It offers employee credit loans for amounts up to 30 million won and business loans up to 15 million won.
- Jul 2021Series C$43.9M
- Feb 2019Series B$6.2M
- May 2017Series B$8.9M
- May 2015Seed$1.3M
#10
Series B · Seoul, Seoul · founded 2014 · 84 employees$38.3Mraised▾
Online platform for consumer loans. It is a P2P marketplace connecting borrowers withlenders for personal and real estate loans. Users must add the required information along with the document and apply for the loan. Once approved, the funds are transferred to the registered bank account. Investors can invest based on terms and amounts.
- Oct 2021Series B$38.3M
- Sep 2016Series A—
- Seed—
#11
Series B · Seoul, Seoul · founded 2014 · 6 employees$29.2Mraised▾
Terafunding is a real estate lending platform that allows investors to invest and provide financing in real estate projects. It offers a P2P marketplace platform to connect borrowers and investors. It also offers real estate secured bond investments analyzed by terafunding inspectors.
- Aug 2019Series B$18M
- Jan 2018Series A$10M
- Jan 2016Seed$1.2M
#12
Series B · Seoul, Seoul · founded 2015 · 16 employees$10.7Mraised▾
FUNDA is a Korea based P2P lending platform that targets only local retail stores. It is impossible for stores to borrow money without collateral, and banks typically offer loans at tremendous interest rates. FUNDA allows individual investors to give loans to small shops and retail stores. The start-up claims to have set up a device that can be attached to cash registers to track sales trends and seasonal fluctuations of retails stores.
- Jan 2020Series B$5.7M
- Jul 2015Grant (prize money)$1.2K
Funding & investor landscape
Notable founders
Market landscape — 10 sub-themes by coverage
Share of Alternative Lending coverage by sub-theme.
Regulatory-risk over time rising
Funding & growth over time
funding rising · growth rising
Common questions
Rohit lives in the feed. He covers what's moving right now — the funding rounds, launches and shifts breaking across the trade press — and ties them back to where the sector is heading.