Whoever signs a microloan is liable for it with all their present and future assets, which is what article 1911 of the Spanish Civil Code says, and that does not change because the lender is a website and the amount is three hundred euros. What does change, and the borrower rarely knows it, is what they are liable for. If the agreed interest is usurious, the contract is void under the Usury Act of 1908 and the loss falls on the lender, who forfeits the interest, the fees and the cost of the rollovers and can only demand the capital it handed over. Someone who stops paying Moneyman is therefore not facing the figure in the latest collection email but the one that results from applying that Act, and the gap between the two is usually enormous. I set it out phase by phase, with the provisions and the deadlines, because almost nothing written about this subject cites a single rule of law.
What you signed and what they can really demand from you
An online microloan is a consumer loan whose annual percentage rate (APR) runs to hundreds or thousands per cent, because the APR formula annualises the cost of a loan designed to last thirty days. That figure decides everything else.
Article 1 of the Act of 23 July 1908 declares void any loan whose interest is notably higher than the normal rate for money and manifestly disproportionate to the circumstances of the case. The Spanish Supreme Court has set out how that “notably higher” is measured in its judgments of 25 November 2015, 4 March 2020 and 15 February 2023. The benchmark is the average rate published by the Bank of Spain for the product category the loan belongs to, and the 2023 judgment specified that, for revolving cards, exceeding that average by six points already amounts to usury. Microloans have no category of their own in the Bank of Spain statistics, and courts compare them with consumer credit or with cards, the most expensive products with an official figure. With a three or four figure APR the comparison almost always ends the same way, although some Provincial Courts have accepted that a loan of a few days with a low absolute cost does not fit the scheme of the Act. That debate exists and you need to know it before claiming.
Act 16/2011 on consumer credit agreements adds two tools. Its article 14 obliges the lender to assess the customer’s creditworthiness before granting credit, and its article 28 allows you to withdraw from the contract within fourteen calendar days of signing by returning the capital and the interest for those days. There is one caveat that affects many microloans and that almost nobody mentions. Article 3 of that Act excludes credit below 200 euros from its scope, so under that figure the Usury Act and consumer protection rules still apply in full, but the statutory withdrawal right and the duty to assess creditworthiness only exist if the contract provides for them.
Timeline of the default, from the first instalment to the court
As soon as the due date passes unpaid, the contract triggers the agreed default interest and, in many microloans, a flat fee for claiming overdue balances. There is case law on both. The Supreme Court considers abusive, in consumer loans, default interest exceeding the ordinary interest by more than two points (judgment of 22 April 2015), and it declared abusive the overdue balance claim fee charged automatically without evidence of any actual collection activity (judgment of 25 October 2019), relying on articles 82 and following of the Consolidated Consumer Protection Act. If no default interest was agreed, the statutory rate under article 1108 of the Civil Code applies. And if the whole loan is usurious, no default interest survives, because nullity sweeps away everything other than the capital.
During the first weeks the collection effort is internal, with emails, text messages and calls from the lender itself offering rollovers or payment plans. Afterwards, usually between the first and the third month, the file is passed to an external collection agency or assigned to a fund, and in parallel you are entered in a debtor register, almost always ASNEF. The court claim is the last phase and for debts of this size it arrives, when it arrives, months or years later, frequently in the hands of a fund that bought the debt for a fraction of its face value.
Can you simply stop paying? You can, but it is not free. The real options are a rollover or a payment plan negotiated with the lender, which stops the collection activity but makes the debt more expensive; a usury claim, which can reduce it to the capital; and the fresh start mechanism when the microloan is only one part of unmanageable debt. Which one suits you depends on the phase you are in and on what you have already paid.
The court payment order and the twenty days
The route lenders and funds use is the payment order procedure under articles 812 and following of the Civil Procedure Act, with no limit on amount. The court serves you with a demand for payment and from that day you have twenty working days (article 815) to pay or to file an opposition. If you do neither, article 816 allows enforcement to be ordered directly, with interest and costs, without a trial and without any further chance to dispute the amount. It is the most expensive mistake made with these debts, because it turns a disputable claim into a final enforceable title.
Since 2015 article 815.4 obliges the judge to examine of their own motion, before issuing the demand, whether the contract contains unfair terms, and through that route some courts already cut fees and default interest. Usury is not an unfair term but a defect of the whole contract with its own regime, and not every court examines it unless the debtor raises it. If you file an opposition, the procedure turns into an oral trial when the amount does not exceed 15,000 euros (a threshold set by Royal Decree-Law 6/2023, in force since 20 March 2024) and that is where the amount owed is argued. For claims under 2,000 euros neither a lawyer nor a court agent is compulsory, but an opposition limited to saying that the interest is high, without the calculation and the comparison the Supreme Court requires, is lost and with costs. How that opposition is built is the lawyer’s job.
What can be seized and what cannot
If the debt reaches enforcement, article 592 of the Civil Procedure Act sets the order of seizure, beginning with cash and bank accounts, continuing with wages, pensions and tax refunds, and leaving movable and immovable property for last. For a microloan the usual targets are the bank account and the income tax refund. The limits on wages and pensions are in article 607 and are calculated in bands over the statutory minimum wage in force.
| Monthly net income band | Portion that can be seized |
|---|---|
| Up to the statutory minimum wage | Nothing |
| Between one and two times the minimum wage | 30 % |
| Between two and three times | 50 % |
| Between three and four times | 60 % |
| Between four and five times | 75 % |
| More than five times | 90 % |
The court may reduce those percentages by between 10 and 15 per cent for family dependants (article 607.4), and article 607 itself extends the protection to the balance of the account into which the salary or pension is paid. Article 606 declares the furniture and clothing of the debtor and their family exempt from seizure, together with the tools needed for their trade. An unpaid microloan will not take your home, but it can leave your bank account empty for years if interest and costs pile up on a small principal.
That is why, when someone comes to the firm with one of these loans, the first thing we do is quantify what they really owe under the Usury Act and establish which phase they are in, before they pay or sign anything. It is part of the civil law work we practise in A Coruña.
ASNEF, the requirements of article 20 and how to get out
Entry in a debtor register does not depend on a number of unpaid days fixed by law. Article 20 of Organic Act 3/2018 on data protection requires that the debt be certain, due and enforceable, that the debtor has previously been demanded payment and warned of the possibility of registration, that no court, arbitration or administrative claim has been filed about its existence or amount, that the debt is less than five years old and that the registration is notified to the debtor within the following thirty days. In practice registration comes between one and three months after the default, but what matters is whether those requirements were met. A lender that registers a disputed debt or one without a prior demand faces a fine from the Spanish Data Protection Agency and liability for the moral damage caused, which the courts recognise without requiring proof of a specific financial loss.
Two practical consequences. If you have filed a court claim for nullity of the loan on grounds of usury, the debt is no longer undisputed and keeping it on the register ceases to comply with the law; you can demand removal from the lender and from the register operator and, if they refuse, go to the Agency. And if the debt attributed to you is not yours, the registration is unlawful from day one.
If Moneyman assigns the debt to a fund or a collection agency
Two situations must be told apart. A collection agency acting on Moneyman’s behalf is not your creditor, only its agent, and the debt and its amount do not change. Assignment of the debt to a fund is different and is governed by articles 1526 and following of the Civil Code. The fund acquires the debt with the same conditions and the same defects, so usury, unfair terms and limitation can be raised against it exactly as against the original lender. You do not owe more because of the assignment, and the fund does not have to accept less merely because it paid little for the debt, except in one specific case. If the debt was assigned when it was already in litigation, with a case open about its existence or amount, article 1535 allows you to extinguish it by paying the fund what it paid for it plus interest and costs, within nine days of the fund demanding payment. It is a rarely used right with strict requirements, but it exists.
You can require the assignee to prove the assignment and the amount, because until you are notified, payment made to the original creditor discharges you (article 1527). In the payment order procedure the fund must produce the original contract and the breakdown of the debt, and claims resting on a bare internal listing without the contract frequently meet with rejection or with a successful opposition.
On harassment. Calling your workplace or your relatives to discuss your debt means communicating personal data to third parties without a legal basis, which the Data Protection Agency can fine under the General Data Protection Regulation, and repeated calls with intimidation or threats of non-existent consequences may amount to the offence of coercion under article 172 of the Criminal Code. Keep the call logs and the messages. Bear in mind too that some of these calls are not from a real creditor at all; I describe how to tell in bank impersonation scams.
Chained rollovers and what you really owe
The rollover is this sector’s main business. Paying an extension fee every thirty days keeps the loan alive without reducing the principal, and after six or eight rollovers it is common to have paid more than the capital without owing a euro less. For the Usury Act the cost of those rollovers is part of the interest, and the consequence under article 3 is arithmetic. If the loan is usurious, you only owe the capital you received, and everything you have paid under any heading, interest, fees or rollovers, is set against that capital. If the total paid exceeds the capital, the lender must refund the excess. A 500 euro loan rolled over eight times at 120 euros per rollover comes to 960 euros paid; with nullity, the debt is extinguished and there are 460 euros to claim back. That is the sum no collection email ever does.
Limitation, five years and what interrupts it
Since the 2015 reform, article 1964 of the Civil Code sets the limitation period for personal actions at five years, and a claim on a loan is one. Loans predating October 2015 are governed by the transitional rule and, absent interruptions, have in any event already expired. The period runs from the moment the debt became enforceable, and article 1973 interrupts it, with a full restart, by a court claim, by an out-of-court demand from the creditor and by any act of acknowledgment by the debtor. A registered letter, an email from the fund or a text message from the collection agency containing a demand interrupts the period if they can prove you received it, and a partial payment, a request for deferral or a message from you saying you will pay later restarts it on your own account. Limitation is not applied by the court of its own motion, it has to be pleaded at the right procedural moment, and that is why knowing which communications exist before answering anyone is worth so much.
You will not go to prison, with two exceptions
Not paying a debt is a civil breach, and the threats of criminal complaints that appear in collection emails are sales patter. There is an offence in only two situations. Fraud under article 248 of the Criminal Code requires deception from the outset, for instance obtaining the loan with an invented payslip or with someone else’s identity and with no intention of repaying, and concealment of assets under article 257 punishes those who, once the debt has been claimed, hide or transfer their property to defeat collection.
The reverse situation, “they are claiming a debt I don’t owe”, is more common than it seems. Online microloans are granted on the strength of a photograph of an identity card and a bank account, and with stolen or leaked documents loans are taken out in other people’s names. If that is your case, the debt is not yours, the entry in the debtor register is unlawful and the lender is answerable for failing to identify its customer properly. The first step is to report the identity theft and the fraud, ask the lender for the contract, the connection data and the account into which the money was paid, and send the police report to the lender and to the register. If your credentials were taken through phishing, the position towards your own bank is explained in bank refunds after phishing.
If the microloan is only the tip of the problem
When a person accumulates several microloans, cards and loans and the total is unmanageable on their income, the way forward is not to challenge them one by one. The fresh start mechanism regulated in the consolidated Insolvency Act after the 2022 reform allows a good faith debtor to obtain discharge of unpaid liabilities, with or without liquidation of their assets, and microloans are among the debts most commonly discharged. It makes no sense for a single three hundred euro loan, because the cost of the procedure exceeds what is at stake, but it does when the total debt can no longer be repaid.
What you can do today on your own
- Download and keep the contract, the general terms, the payment schedule and every receipt for payments and rollovers before your access to the app is cut off.
- Do not sign any acknowledgment of debt or payment plan until someone has first calculated whether the debt exists in that amount. An acknowledgment interrupts the limitation period and makes it harder to dispute the figure later.
- Do not pay a figure merely because the collection agency presents it as a “discount”. Always ask for a written breakdown, with capital, interest and fees shown separately.
- If you receive anything from the court, note the day you received it. The twenty days run from then.
- Check who is calling you. There are scammers claiming non-existent debts under the names of real lenders, and no legitimate creditor demands payment to a private individual by Bizum or in gift cards.
- Do not hand over details of relatives or of your workplace, and keep the call logs.
What someone handling this alone stands to lose is specific. Paying interest and rollovers the law does not oblige them to pay, signing a plan that turns a disputable debt into an acknowledged one, or letting the twenty days of the payment order run out and finding themselves with an enforcement plus costs over an amount that could have been cut down to the capital. At the firm we recalculate the debt under the Usury Act and the Supreme Court’s case law, oppose the payment order or negotiate with the fund from that figure, and handle removal from the debtor register. If you have an unpaid or already claimed loan from Moneyman or any other platform, call us on +34 677 841 007 or write to us through contact and we review it as part of our civil law work. Have to hand the contract and the terms, the statement of what you have paid with the date of each rollover, the collection emails or letters, the debtor register notification if there was one and, if anything has arrived from the court, the document with the date you received it.
Frequently asked questions
How many unpaid days have to pass before Moneyman puts me on ASNEF?
The law does not set a number of days. Article 20 of Organic Act 3/2018 requires the debt to be certain, due and enforceable, that you were demanded payment beforehand and warned of the registration, that you have not filed a court or administrative claim about it and that the registration is notified to you within the following thirty days. In practice it usually happens between one and three months after the default. If any of those requirements is missing, the registration is unlawful and you can demand removal and compensation.
I have received a court payment order for a Moneyman loan, what do I do?
You have twenty working days from service to pay or to file an opposition. If you do nothing, enforcement is ordered for the amount claimed plus interest and costs and you will no longer be able to dispute it. In the opposition you can plead usury, unfair terms, limitation or the fund’s failure to prove the debt, but it has to be grounded on the calculation and the comparison the Supreme Court requires. Keep the document with the date of receipt and seek advice before the deadline runs.
If Moneyman has sold my debt to a collection company, who do I pay and do I still owe the same?
If the collection company merely manages collection for Moneyman, the creditor is still Moneyman and the debt is the same. If the debt has been assigned to a fund, the fund acquires it with the same conditions and the same defects, so usury, unfair terms and limitation can be raised against it just the same. You can require it to prove the assignment and the amount, and until you are notified, payment to Moneyman discharges you. If the debt was assigned when it was already in litigation, article 1535 of the Civil Code lets you extinguish it by paying what the fund paid for it.
Is it worth hiring a lawyer for a 300 euro microloan?
It depends on the phase and on the accumulated amount. If you owe a single small loan, with no rollovers, still within the withdrawal period or only a few weeks late, the sensible thing is to pay the capital and the interest for the term or to negotiate directly, because a lawyer’s fee would exceed what is in dispute. It is worth it when you have chained rollovers and what you have paid approaches or exceeds the capital, when you have been put on ASNEF irregularly, when you have received a court payment order, or when you have several microloans and the total debt is unmanageable. In those cases what is recovered or no longer paid is usually several times the fee.