Should you invest in Be The Bank?

Last Updated on January 28, 2026

Be The Bank (BTB Israel) is an investment platform we get asked about all the time. With so few easy-to-use investment platforms in NIS, is this the one you should be using? This guide is designed to help you understand how it works, the pros and cons, and where it may or may not fit in your financial plan.

As a completely independent business that never takes kickbacks, we are in a unique position to fairly evaluate platforms like this and give our readers and clients a balanced perspective. As always, our guides are meant to help you begin your own independent research and are not intended to be interpreted as specific investment or tax advice.

What is Be The Bank?

BTB is not a bank. BTB is a peer-to-peer lending platform that matches investors (the lenders) with companies and small businesses looking for a loan (the borrowers). Investors get to earn interest while borrowers gain access to business capital they might not have been able to obtain from banks or other lenders. Let’s break it down:

How it works

BTB is a technology company that built a marketplace to efficiently connect individuals who are willing to lend out their money in order to earn a return with companies looking to borrow money for business expenses. Once you join the platform and add money to an investment track, your funds are broken up into small pieces and spread across hundreds or even thousands of different loans.

The investment tracks at BTB

Be The Bank offers several different tracks with different risk profiles, lock-up periods, and average annual interest rates. Here are the key features of each track:

• B-Match – You can request a withdrawal at anytime.
• B-Gold – All loans are secured by collateral (lower risk), but you can only request a withdrawal every 18 months.
• B-State – Loans are issued via a fund that is managed by, and backed by, the government, but you can only request a withdrawal every 12 months.
• Neo – You can request a withdrawal at any time and make instant transfers to other Neo users.

For a more detailed breakdown of the different tracks, here is how they compare:

Detailed comparison chart

	B-Match	B-Gold	B-State	Neo
Advertised annual interest rate (see important note below)	8.9%1	8.9%1	5.75%	4.7%
Types of loans	All types	collateral backed only, lower risk	Only loans via gov backed fund, lowest risk	All types
Management fee	0.7%	0.8%	n/a	n/a
Withdrawal requests 2	Anytime	Every 18 months	Every 12 months	Anytime & instant transfers to other Neo users3
Key advantage	High interest rate with daily potential liquidity	Lower credit risk	Gov. backed nature of fund reduces risk significantly	Most liquid track
Disadvantage	Higher risk	Very limited liquidity	Potential PFIC 4 exposure	Significantly lower projected interest rate than B-match with limited additional benefits

1 – Average annual interest rates as of Nov 2025. As interest rates in Israel change, so will your return. The “average annual interest” is before management fees, defaults/write-offs, and taxes. While the company doesn’t release concrete data on this, based on sample periods we’ve reviewed we believe investors should expect to earn roughly 2–3% less than the stated average annual interest rate once fees and defaults are taken into account. During a financial crisis, returns could be significantly lower or even negative.

2 – This is when you can request a withdrawal, but withdrawal requests are not guaranteed to be fulfilled.

3 – Without broad adoption, there’s very little real-world advantage to the “instant transfers to Neo users” feature, and this track currently offers a significantly lower projected interest rate than B-Match without meaningfully lower risk.

4 – Funds invested in the B-State track are added to a managed investment fund rather than being lent out directly. U.S. citizens should consult with a tax professional before using this track.

What we like

Before getting into some of the downsides of the platform, here are a few things we really like:

• Ease of use – Setting up an account is easy, and using the platform is generally very straightforward once you get the hang of it.
• Non-PFIC investment in NIS – For Americans in Israel, finding an investment that’s in the currency they live in and is also not a PFIC is extremely difficult. Be The Bank offers exactly this.
• Interest rates – The net interest you can earn (after fees, taxes, and defaults) is generally higher than what you can earn with other savings products like a Pikadon or Keren Kaspit. Though, as you’ll see shortly, like most things in investing, higher expected returns also mean higher risk.
• Well established – While other P2P platforms in Israel have failed, Be The Bank has grown. Operating since 2014, BTB has handled over 7 billion NIS in deposits and is regulated under the Capital Market, Insurance and Savings Authority.

Biggest risks

I’ve found that the name very often misleads people into thinking BTB is just like investing in a bank deposit, just with higher interest. “Finally, a platform that gets me more of my fair share of that interest which regular banks just refuse to share with me,” right?

The reality is that BTB is an entirely different investment than a regular bank deposit (פיקדון) with an entirely different set of risks and characteristics. The interest you can earn is higher for a reason. While regulatory requirements can reduce some of these risks and help government agencies monitor the platform, they can’t remove these risks entirely. Let’s break this down:

Liquidity risk

Just because you make a withdrawal request doesn’t mean it will be granted. When you put money on the platform, those funds go toward specific loans that have been granted to businesses for a set period of time. Once the term of the loan ends, the business (in most cases) pays back the loan and you receive your money back. The money will either be automatically invested into a different loan or withdrawn to your bank account (depending on what you choose).

If, however, you decide you want to take your money out early—before the loans in your portfolio mature—someone else has to take your place. In a well-established platform with lots of different users and thousands of different loans maturing at different times, this process can be quick and smooth. But in an extreme market scenario, where many users are rushing to pull their money out at the same time, there is a real potential for very long delays.

To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t any publicly available data showing the average time it takes for a withdrawal request to be met, how long withdrawals took during more market-sensitive periods (like the beginning of the COVID pandemic), or any independently administered stress tests examining how the platform would handle a major financial crisis and an extreme number of withdrawal requests at the same time. Most peer-to-peer lending companies, including BTB, were not operating during the last major global liquidity crisis in 2008.

Credit risk

Whenever you lend to a business, there is always a chance it will go under and be unable to pay back the loan. BTB seeks to reduce this risk for every user in four main ways:

1. Fractional loans – The money you add to the platform is distributed among many different loans, thereby reducing the exposure you have to any given borrower (diversification). If a loan defaults, it’s unlikely to have a major impact on your overall portfolio.
2. Mutual guarantee fund – Every time someone invests or receives interest, a small slice (1%) is skimmed off and put into a shared pot. It’s basically a shared emergency buffer that smooths out the damage from a few bad loans. From an investor’s point of view, in normal times you keep getting your monthly payments even when some borrowers misbehave, because the fund covers the gap. But the fund is finite – in a major crisis, it can be overwhelmed and won’t fully protect investors.
3. Due diligence – BTB says it conducts a thorough review of every potential borrower, including credit checks, requiring collateral and personal guarantees, and using an experienced credit committee to approve loans.
4. Acting as an active creditor – Each borrower signs an extensive legal agreement, and BTB says it will aggressively litigate to recover debts and will use the guarantee fund to pay investors until the legal process concludes.

These methods can certainly reduce credit risk for investors, but they won’t eliminate it. The biggest concern is a financial crisis in which a large number of small businesses are negatively impacted and unable to stay current on their debt obligations at the same time.

While customers of failing Israeli banks have, in some cases in the past, been backed by the government, there’s no reason to expect that the government would come to the rescue of investors in a peer-to-peer lending platform. Your investments are not guaranteed, and you could lose money.

Platform Risk

As we mentioned, BTB is primarily a technology company that builds and maintains a system to efficiently match lenders with borrowers, and people looking to add money to the platform with people looking to take their money out. But what happens in a worst-case scenario where the company collapses? Who will be responsible for ensuring that each borrower pays back their debt? Who will ensure that each fractional owner of a bond is paid back the share of the loan they’re due? Even if a legal or government body steps in to take the reins, wouldn’t very long delays be expected?

Unfortunately, many peer-to-peer lending platforms around the world have failed, and this scenario—however remote for BTB—is part of the fabric of this type of investment.

Summary

Peer-to-peer lending platforms like BTB carry a unique set of risks. Without publicly available data on default rates, average withdrawal times, and various stress-test scenarios, it’s hard to quantify how big or small each risk really is. While bank CEOs have access to all that data, as an investor in Be The Bank, you don’t.

This platform is generally not a good place to store funds for your emergency fund or money you’re putting aside for an upcoming goal.

Where does it belong in your portfolio?

As we like to stress, whether or not an investment is “good” or “bad” isn’t the right question. The better question is whether an investment is good or bad for you, and where it might best fit in your overall financial plan. Say you understand the risks and want to invest in BTB – where does it fit, and how much should you be investing?

The two buckets

Most of our clients, and many of our readers, are in the “accumulation” stage of life. Simply put, younger professionals with 20–50 years until retirement often have two core financial buckets:

• The safe & liquid bucket – This is where you keep funds you might need for an emergency, day-to-day spending, or another upcoming savings goal (like a car or house purchase). This money is often held in your bank using tools like Pikdonot, Keren Kaspit (for non-Americans), and cash savings.
• The long-term wealth-building bucket – This is where you accumulate wealth to build long-term financial freedom. It often includes your pension, Keren Hishtalmut, real estate, and personal investments in a globally diversified, low-cost ETF portfolio. In this bucket, you’re much more comfortable with the ups and downs of investing in exchange for higher long-term returns.

For those who take this approach, Be The Bank doesn’t fit well into either bucket. It isn’t low risk or liquid enough for that first bucket. And for the second wealth-building bucket, the expected returns—especially after taking into account BTB’s management fees and defaults—are not particularly close to what one would reasonably expect to earn over the long term by investing in real estate or a simple, broadly diversified stock portfolio.

So where can it fit?

This is not a low-risk savings product. It’s an illiquid, higher-risk credit investment. For most people, it should be at most a small satellite allocation, not a core holding. If you’re comfortable with the risks and want a slice of your long-term bucket held outside of traditional assets and exclusively in NIS, BTB could be a good fit.