SMBX
AltStreet reconstructed SMBX's SEC Form C record (271 offerings by 250 small businesses since 2019) and captured the platform's own market dashboard, which shows every listed bond's amount raised, investor count and monthly repayment progress: 211 funded bonds, $21.84 million, 63 repaid in full and 148 repaying, 147 of them within one payment of schedule. Three things the marketplace does not put together for you: 53 of the 275 numbered auction slots are absent from that dashboard, and AltStreet could recover archived listings for 48 of them (34 SEC-filed offerings) but not their outcomes; among issuers whose bond is confirmed funded and old enough to owe the SEC an annual report, 89 of 106 have filed neither a report nor a termination; and no bond has closed on SMBX since April 2026.
No platform response on record for this review. Is this your platform? Respond or claim it.
What the data actually shows - TL;DR
SMBX has intermediated 271 Regulation Crowdfunding bond offerings by 250 small businesses since August 2019, all $10-unit fixed-rate amortizing debt. Its public dashboard shows 211 funded bonds raising $21.84 million from 25,510 investor allocations (median raise $73,330), 63 repaid in full, 148 repaying with 147 within one payment of schedule, and 11 failed.
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Coupons rose from a 7.5% median in 2021 and 2022 to 11.25% in 2025; terms are mostly 36 or 60 months; 12 bonds are secured. What the marketplace does not assemble for you: 53 of 275 auction numbers are absent from the dashboard, and archived listings recover 48 of them but not their outcomes; 89 of 106 confirmed-funded older issuers filed neither an annual report nor a termination, and only six progress updates exist across 271 offerings; the issuer fee is stated three different ways and the recurring fee two ways; and no bond has funded since April 2026, with no statement from the company about its plans.
Funded auctions on the SMBX dashboard, 2019 to April 2026, from 25,510 investor allocations averaging $856. By close year: $5.27M in 2022, $3.72M in 2023, $4.64M in 2024, $5.79M in 2025, $0.34M in 2026.
All 63 matured bonds show every scheduled payment made ($4.05M of principal; 22 prepaid). Of 148 repaying, 147 are within one monthly payment of schedule on AltStreet's heuristic; one is two behind. The endpoint has no default field.
Auction numbers run 1 to 275 but the dashboard returns 222. Archived listings account for 48 of the absent numbers (34 SEC-filed offerings, two withdrawals, three issuers that later terminated reporting), but the archived pages hold no offering data, so their outcomes cannot be reconstructed and the site does not address them.
Confirmed-funded issuers with a Form C before April 2025 that filed neither an annual report nor a termination (17 filed a C-AR, 12 of them later terminating). Across all 206 older non-withdrawn issuers examined, 180 filed neither, a filing gap rather than 180 proven violations since a close could not be confirmed for every unmatched issuer. Six progress updates exist across 271 offerings, so amounts raised live only on the platform.
Investor fee by ACH (4% by card) and the issuer capital-raise fee, plus $50 a month ($25 for pre-July-2024 bonds) while a bond is outstanding. Fee statements differ across the agreement, the CFPORTAL filing, the prospectuses and the educational materials.
AltStreet SEC Form C census of the SMBX portal CIK 0001707214 (271 offerings, 250 issuers, 2019 to 2026) with all issuer lifecycle filings; SMBX market dashboard API capture of 222 auctions; three prospectuses, the Agreements and Disclosures, educational materials and site, all captured 2026-09-16.
AltStreet Weekly
Track the filings and the payment counters SMBX doesn't summarize
AltStreet reconstructed 271 SMBX offerings from EDGAR and captured every listed bond's repayment progress. Get notified when an issuer files, a bond matures, or the portal's own registration changes.
Free during beta. Filing-grounded data, no platform marketing.
What's Actually Happening
In plain English, here is what is actually happening.
- 1You lend money to a small business, a pizzeria, bakery, brewery, gym or bike shop, by buying its bonds at $10 each on the SMBX app. Anyone with a US bank account can do it; no accreditation is required.
- 2The business pays you back every month, principal plus interest, over a fixed term, usually three or five years, at a fixed rate between 6% and 11.5%. Most bonds are unsecured; a few are backed by equipment or other assets.
- 3SMBX collects the payments and holds them for you at a partner bank until you withdraw. If a business misses a payment, SMBX chases it; if it is more than 30 days late, your payments stop until it catches up. Nobody guarantees you get paid.
- 4You pay nothing to invest by bank transfer (4% if you use a credit card). The business pays SMBX up to 6% of what it raises plus a monthly processing fee.
- 5There is no market to sell your bonds and ordinary resale is unavailable (limited transfers to family or accredited investors may be permitted on request); in practice you hold them until the business finishes paying or pays early, which many do. Interest is taxed as ordinary income on a 1099-INT.
- 6As of September 2026 there are no bonds for sale on SMBX, and the platform has not said whether new ones are coming. Existing bonds continue to be repaid through the platform.
Quick Verdict
Is this platform right for you?
SMBX is the cleanest retail small-business debt instrument AltStreet has reviewed: $10 bonds, fixed coupons, monthly amortization from month one, a prospectus with real financials, no investor fee by bank transfer, and a dashboard that shows repayment progress on every listed bond. The bonds it still lists are almost all paying.
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The reservations are about the edges of that picture: 53 auction numbers absent from the dashboard whose outcomes cannot be reconstructed, an issuer base that overwhelmingly skips its SEC annual-report obligation, fee terms that vary by document, and a platform that has funded nothing since April 2026 and has not said whether it will again. For existing bondholders the question is servicing continuity; for new investors there is, at the moment, nothing to buy.
Best for
- Existing SMBX bondholders who want to understand what the dashboard does and does not tell them
- Community lenders who want $10-unit exposure to named local businesses with monthly cash back, if offerings resume
- Investors who will read the Bond Prospectus financials and debt schedule and treat the coupon as the price of an unsecured small-business loan
- Anyone comparing Reg CF debt portals on fees: SMBX's zero investor fee by ACH is the structural contrast with Honeycomb's 3%
Avoid if
- You need liquidity: there is no secondary market, ordinary resale is unavailable, and terms run to 120 months
- You require a published default and recovery history: the dashboard shows the bonds it returns, not losses, and 53 auction numbers are absent with outcomes that cannot be reconstructed
- You would rely on ongoing issuer disclosure: 84% of confirmed-funded older issuers filed no annual report
- You want to invest today: no offerings were live on September 16, 2026
Top strengths
- Transparent instrument: $10 units, fixed rate, fixed term, monthly principal and interest, a public prospectus with two years of financials and the issuer's other debts
- Zero investor fee by ACH, unlike the closest comparable portal
- Per-bond repayment visibility on every listed auction, with 63 bonds repaid in full and 147 of 148 repaying within one payment of schedule
- SEC-registered, FINRA-member funding portal with clean CFPORTAL disclosures and no located enforcement history; escrow at unaffiliated third parties
Key limitations
- 53 of 275 auction numbers are absent from the dashboard with no explanation, and no delinquency or default field is published
- Issuer compliance: 89 of 106 confirmed-funded older issuers filed neither an annual report nor a termination (180 of 206 across the wider population examined); six progress updates across 271 offerings
- Issuer fees stated as up to 6%, 4.5% and 0% across live documents; the current agreement carries a $50 monthly processing fee for offerings from July 2024 and $25 for earlier ones, against the $100 annual fee the educational materials still describe
- No bond has funded since April 2026; the company has not disclosed its plans, and no backup-servicing arrangement is described
Where It Fits
Where SMBX fits relative to the alternatives.
Small-business bonds, monthly amortizing
If you want
Lend $10 at a time to a named local business at a fixed 6% to 11.5% and get paid monthly
Use
SMBX, if and when it lists offerings again
Small-business loans with a live pipeline
If you want
The same community-lending idea with campaigns open today, quarterly repayment and richer collateral disclosure
Use
Honeycomb Credit, at the cost of a 3% investor fee by ACH
Retail debt with a published loss history
If you want
Fixed-rate notes where the platform publishes loan-level defaults and recoveries
Use
Groundfloor, short-term real estate notes with a full performance record
Compare Before Deciding
How SMBX compares
SMBX's closest alternatives differ on the three things that matter here: whether investors pay a fee, whether repayment is published, and whether anything is for sale.
Same idea, live pipeline, 3% investor fee
Honeycomb Credit
Reg CF small-business loans at roughly $100 with more than 100 campaigns open, richer collateral disclosure, quarterly repayment, and a 3% ACH fee that SMBX does not charge.
The performance-transparency benchmark
Groundfloor
Retail real estate debt with full loan-level repayment and default history published and first-position liens; what SMBX's dashboard would be with the absent auctions and a default field included.
What a ceased portal looks like
Mainvest
A Reg CF small-business portal that stopped in 2024; the reference case for investor servicing and communication after originations end.
Quick Answers
What most investors want to know first
The highest-signal facts first: minimums, liquidity reality, K-1 timing, and whether distributions are actually part of the experience.
Minimum
$10 (one bond); orders in $10 increments
Liquidity
None. The platform states bonds cannot be resold, no venue exists to transact in them, and only limited exempt transfers are available on request.
K-1 Timing
No K-1s; bond interest is reported on Form 1099-INT by January 31.
Distributions
Payments begin one month after the bond issuance date and recur on the same day each month (next business day if a weekend or holiday); the final payment is the month withheld from proceeds at issuance. Received payments are released to investor accounts as SMBX receives them from the issuer; a payment marked pending means the issuer's transfer has not arrived.
Overview
Platform Overview
A concise read on what the platform is, how the structure works, and where the practical friction shows up for real investors.
Regulation Crowdfunding marketplace for Small Business Bonds: SMBX, Inc. (SEC-registered funding portal, FINRA member, SEC File No. 007-00129, San Francisco) hosts auctions in which independent small businesses sell $10-unit fixed-rate bonds to the public under Section 4(a)(6). Bonds carry 6% to 11.5% fixed interest over 5 to 120 months (mostly 36 or 60) and amortize monthly from the month after issuance, with SMBX servicing payments into an investor escrow account at Thread Bank; offering proceeds sit at North Capital Private Securities until an auction clears its minimum. Investors pay no fee by bank transfer and 4% by credit card; issuers pay a capital-raise fee of up to 6% of the amount raised plus a monthly processing fee.
There is no secondary market; ordinary resale is unavailable and only limited exempt transfers may be permitted on request. Interest is reported on Form 1099-INT. No offering was live on September 16, 2026.
Each bond is a Regulation Crowdfunding security with a Form C behind it and a Bond Prospectus that prints the issuer's financials and existing debts. Offerings have a minimum and a maximum and last at least 21 days; if the minimum is missed, orders are refunded. After issuance the only way out is the repayment schedule, since there is no secondary market.
The appeal is genuine: $10 exposure to a named local business, monthly cash back, no investor fee, and a dashboard that shows whether each listed bond is paying. The tradeoffs are unsecured credit, 53 absent auction numbers the platform does not explain, issuers that rarely file their ongoing reports, and a marketplace that has funded nothing since April 2026.
Minimum Investment
$10 (one bond); orders in $10 increments
Investor Eligibility
All US investors with a bank account (Regulation Crowdfunding); non-accredited subject to Reg CF annual limits
Instrument
Fixed-rate Small Business Bonds, $10 units, fully amortizing monthly principal and interest; issuer may prepay
Coupons
6% to 11.5% fixed across 211 funded bonds; median 10.5%; 2025 median 11.25% (2021 to 2022 median 7.5%)
Terms
5 to 120 months; 36 months on 93 bonds and 60 months on 63; 24 and 48 months next most common
Collateral
12 of 222 listed bonds secured (equipment, inventory, property or cash per the help center); the rest unsecured, often behind bank, SBA or EIDL debt shown in the prospectus
Investor Fees
None by bank transfer; 4% surcharge by credit card (max $5,000 per investor per week); no fee to withdraw
Issuer Fees
Capital-raise fee up to 6.0% of amount raised (4.5% and 0% observed in prospectuses) plus $50 a month while outstanding for offerings launched from July 1, 2024 ($25 for earlier ones)
Liquidity
No secondary market; ordinary resale unavailable, with limited exempt transfers (family, accredited investors) permitted on request per the agreement; monthly amortization returns principal continuously
Tax Reporting
Form 1099-INT (issued when interest of $10 or more accrues in a year)
Escrow and Servicing
Offering proceeds at North Capital Private Securities; repayments serviced by SMBX into investor escrow at Thread Bank
Platform Track Record
271 Form C offerings by 250 issuers since August 2019; 211 funded for $21.84M; 63 matured, 148 repaying, 11 failed; 53 auction numbers absent from the dashboard
Current Status
No live offering on September 16, 2026; last funded bonds closed April 2026; last Form C April 6, 2026
Visual Summary
SMBX vs. Key Alternatives
How SMBX compares to the other retail small-business and fixed-rate debt venues investors weigh against it.
What you buy
SMBX: fixed-rate amortizing bonds of local small businesses · Honeycomb: fixed-rate loans to local small businesses · Groundfloor: short-term real estate debt notes · Wefunder: mostly startup equity and SAFEs
Minimum
SMBX: $10 · Honeycomb: ~$100 median · Groundfloor: $100 · Wefunder: $100 typical
Investor fees
SMBX: none by ACH, 4% by card · Honeycomb: 3% ACH capped $75, 5.5% + $2 card · Groundfloor: none · Wefunder: ~2%
Stated returns
SMBX: 6% to 11.5% fixed (2025 median 11.25%) · Honeycomb: 4.5% to 14.75% (median 12%) · Groundfloor: ~7% to 15% by loan grade · Wefunder: equity upside, no coupon
Repayment cadence
SMBX: monthly from month one · Honeycomb: mostly quarterly · Groundfloor: at loan payoff · Wefunder: none
Performance disclosure
SMBX: per-bond payments made vs due on 222 listed bonds; 53 auction numbers absent; no default field · Honeycomb: none at loan level · Groundfloor: full loan-level repayment and default history · Wefunder: none
Live pipeline (Sept 2026)
SMBX: none · Honeycomb: 100+ campaigns · Groundfloor: continuous · Wefunder: continuous
ASEconomic Positioning
- The $73,330 median raise and $856 average allocation describe a marketplace built on very small tickets from many investors (median 112 per bond, up to 396). At a 4.5% to 6% capital-raise fee that is roughly $3,300 to $4,400 of revenue per median bond, which is why the July 2024 addition of a $50 monthly processing fee per outstanding bond matters to the platform's economics: on 148 repaying bonds it is on the order of $60,000 to $90,000 a year of recurring revenue, against the $100-a-year maintenance fee the educational materials still describe.
- Investor fee absence is the structural difference from Honeycomb and it is real, but it is paid for on the issuer side. A $100,000 five-year bond at 11% costs the issuer the coupon plus up to $6,000 up front plus $3,000 of processing fees over the term, an all-in cost of capital well above the stated rate and above what an SBA loan would charge a business that could get one. SMBX's own pitch is that its borrowers cannot, or cannot fast enough.
- Coupon rose with the loss of the zero-fee program cohort. The 6% to 7.5% bonds of 2020 to 2022 were disproportionately DC Rebuild and SMBX Rebuild Bond Program offerings where SMBX waived its fee; the 2023 to 2025 book, priced at 10.5% to 11.5%, is ordinary marketplace pricing for unsecured small-business debt and is the population whose outcomes are still mostly unobserved.
- Volume peaked in 2022 by dollars ($5.27 million, 41 bonds) and in 2024 by count (53 bonds), recovered to $5.79 million in 2025, and then stopped: seven bonds and $341,810 in 2026, none after April. Nothing in the filings or on the site explains the halt.
Key Gaps & Non-Disclosures
- The outcomes of the 53 absent auction numbers and any default, charge-off or recovery history.
- A delinquency field on the dashboard; payments made versus due is the only signal.
- Ongoing issuer financials: 89 of 106 confirmed-funded older issuers filed neither an annual report nor a termination.
- The platform's own status and any servicing continuity plan.
- One authoritative fee schedule reconciling the 6%, 4.5% and 0% statements and the $100-a-year versus $25 or $50-a-month recurring fee.
Platform Intelligence
SMBX Milestones (AltStreet filing-tracked)
Key platform events, regulatory turns, liquidity stress points, and product launches that shape how the review should be read.
Peerhood, LLC formed; SMBX raises seed capital
The company is organized in Delaware on January 4, 2016 as Peerhood, LLC, later renamed SMBX; Benjamin Lozano is CEO and control person from the start, with Jackie Chan (COO) and, from May 2018, Bhavish Balhotra (CTO) as co-founders. The company describes itself as recovering bankers and financial engineers building a small-business bond market on Title III of the JOBS Act.
SEC funding-portal registration
Form CFPORTAL filed November 28, 2018 (SEC File No. 007-00129, CIK 0001707214); FINRA funding-portal membership follows. The first Form C intermediated by SMBX is filed August 2, 2019 (Bernal Cutlery, San Francisco, $139,380 raised at 8%).
Rebuild Bond Programs during the pandemic
SMBX waives its fee on pandemic-era offerings under the SMBX Small Business Rebuild Bond Program and, in Washington, D.C., the DC Rebuild Bond Program; Quesadilla Gorilla (6%, 60 months, secured, $165,000) and Maketto (7.5%, 60 months, $250,000 maximum) are among them. Twelve Form Cs are filed in 2020; median coupons run 7.5% through 2022.
$11.2 million venture round
Form D filed December 20, 2021: $11,172,457 sold to 27 investors under Rule 506(b), with Dovi Frances of Group 11 listed as a director. Press coverage describes an $11.5 million seed led by Group 11 with Better Ventures, Impact America Fund, Unpopular Ventures and Berkeley SkyDeck.
Peak dollar year and the largest bond
41 bonds fund for $5.27 million, the platform's largest year by dollars, including Boichik Bagels ($1.07 million, 7.5%, 84 months, 396 investors), still the largest raise on SMBX. 56 Form Cs are filed. In July the CEO tells the San Francisco Standard that SMBX has had no defaults but that one is 'only a matter of time'.
Monthly processing fee introduced
The current investor agreement dates a $50 monthly payment-processing fee to offerings launched on or after July 1, 2024, with $25 a month on earlier offerings, for as long as the bond is outstanding. 53 bonds fund in 2024, the platform's peak by count; the December 26, 2024 CFPORTAL amendment moves the company address and names Thread Bank as the qualified third party.
Highest-coupon year and the last full year
48 bonds fund for $5.79 million at a median 11.25% coupon; the blog publishes the 2024 wrap-up in March (largest 2024 raise $400,000, investors from 462 cities), its last post. Four Form C-TR terminations and one withdrawal are filed by issuers during the year.
Originations stop
Seven bonds fund in 2026 for $341,810, the last closing in April; the final Form C (Cache, April 6) fails to reach its minimum, and an August Form C-U reports another offering closed unsuccessfully. On September 16, 2026 the marketplace lists no live offering. Registrations remain current and repayments continue to be serviced; the company has made no public statement about its plans.
AltStreet census and dashboard capture
271 Form C offerings by 250 issuers reconstructed from EDGAR with all lifecycle filings; 222 auctions captured from the market dashboard (211 funded, $21.84 million, 63 matured, 148 repaying, 11 failed; 53 auction numbers absent). Three prospectuses, the agreements, the educational materials and the portal's registration record read in full.
Mental Model
How SMBX actually works, simplified.
A business files a Form C and opens an auction
The issuer sets a minimum (often $10,000 to $50,000), a maximum, a fixed rate and a term, and posts a Bond Prospectus with two years of financials and its existing debts. The auction runs at least 21 days. Everything is denominated in $10 bonds.
Investors place orders in $10 increments
Orders sit in escrow at North Capital Private Securities until close. Orders above the maximum go unfilled; orders can be canceled until 48 hours before close. If the minimum is not met, everyone is refunded in about five business days. Eleven of 222 listed auctions failed this way.
The bond issues and amortizes monthly
One month's payment is withheld from the proceeds as the final payment. From the next month the business pays principal and interest on the same day each month; SMBX passes it to an escrow account at Thread Bank, and you withdraw or reinvest. Bonds are callable, and 22 of the 63 matured bonds were prepaid.
You hold until maturity, or the business stops paying
There is no secondary market. A missed payment shows as pending; after 30 days uncured, your payments halt until the business is current. Secured bonds give SMBX an asset to pursue; unsecured bonds, the majority, rely on whatever SMBX can recover. The dashboard shows payments made, not what happened to the auction numbers it does not return.
Investor Operations
The practical questions investors actually care about: when tax documents arrive, how cash distributions work, and whether capital can be exited before the underlying asset is sold.
Tax Documents
K-1 Timing
What to expect
No K-1s; bond interest is reported on Form 1099-INT by January 31.
Confidence: High
Cash Flow
Distributions
Frequency
monthly
Timing
Payments begin one month after the bond issuance date and recur on the same day each month (next business day if a weekend or holiday); the final payment is the month withheld from proceeds at issuance. Received payments are released to investor accounts as SMBX receives them from the issuer; a payment marked pending means the issuer's transfer has not arrived.
Consistency
Depends entirely on the issuer. On the dashboard, all 63 matured bonds show every scheduled payment made and 147 of 148 repaying bonds are within one payment of schedule on AltStreet's count; the platform publishes no delinquency statistics and 53 auctions are not shown.
Liquidity
Exit Reality
Holding period
Full bond term: 5 to 120 months across the book, 36 or 60 months on most bonds, with principal returning monthly from the first payment.
Exit options
- Cancellation until 48 hours before the auction closes, with funds returned in about five business days (the 4% card surcharge is not refunded).
- Scheduled monthly principal and interest through maturity, or earlier if the issuer prepays; 22 of 63 matured bonds were prepaid.
- No secondary market: the help center states bonds 'cannot be resold or transferred'; the agreement permits limited transfers to family or accredited investors on request, as Reg CF's transfer exceptions allow, but no market exists.
Secondary market
None. The platform states bonds cannot be resold, no venue exists to transact in them, and only limited exempt transfers are available on request.
Confidence: High
Investment Structures
Unsecured Small Business Bonds (the core book)
Roughly 95% of listed bonds: fixed-rate, fully amortizing $10 bonds of restaurants, cafes, bakeries, breweries, wineries, fitness studios, salons, retailers and service firms, mostly 36 or 60 months at 10.5% to 11.5% in the 2023 to 2025 cohorts. The prospectus prints two years of revenue and net income, current assets and debts, and a schedule of existing creditors with rates and maturities; many issuers carry senior bank, SBA or EIDL debt ahead of the bonds. Investor recourse is the issuer's promise plus SMBX's servicing process. Examples read in full: Maketto (Washington, D.C., 7.5%, 60 months, $250,000 maximum, 0% fee under the DC Rebuild program, $1.48 million of 2020 revenue) and Geogreens (Union City, New Jersey, 10.5%, 36 months, $75,000 maximum, 4.50% fee, $50,029 of FY22 revenue).
Secured Small Business Bonds (12 listed)
A minority of bonds pledge collateral, described on the offering page and in the prospectus: equipment, inventory, property or sometimes cash. Quesadilla Gorilla's 2020 bond (6%, 60 months, $165,000, fully repaid) is one; Boichik Bagels ($1.07 million, 84 months, 396 investors, the largest raise on the platform) is another. The help center says that on a secured bond SMBX 'works to recover your investment by working with the business to sell the underlying asset'. No valuation of pledged assets is given.
Program Bonds (DC Rebuild, SMBX Rebuild, Mercer County)
Pandemic-era and municipal-partnership cohorts in which SMBX waived its capital-raise fee and coupons ran 6% to 7.5%. These bonds are the bulk of the matured population and of the platform's clean repayment record to date; the ordinary-fee 2023 to 2025 book at 10.5% to 11.5% is mostly mid-term.
Repeat Issuances
Issuers that return are numbered on the dashboard (StrangeBird 2, Breadbelly 2, GK Pastry 2, MISE 2, 24 HR Truck Services 2, The Noble Fox 3). A second bond is the one place an investor can check an SMBX issuer's actual payment history before lending again, since the earlier bond's payments made against due are on the same dashboard.
Risk
Risk Structure
This is where the marketplace pitch gives way to the actual operating reality: delayed exits, limited disclosure, fee drag, and path-dependent outcomes.
A Repayment Ledger With a Hole in It
SMBX publishes, through its market dashboard, the amount raised, investor count, yield, term and monthly payments made against payments due for each of the 222 auctions it lists. On AltStreet's reading, 63 matured bonds show every payment made and 147 of 148 repaying bonds are within one payment of schedule; the one exception (Away Days Brewing, 30 of 60 payments after 32 expected) is two behind. Eight bonds show all payments made but are not yet flagged fully paid, which reads as status lag.
What the ledger omits is any delinquency or default field and the 53 auction numbers between 1 and 275 that are not returned at all. Archived listings account for 48 of them (34 SEC-filed offerings, two withdrawals, three issuers that later terminated reporting) but hold no offering data, so AltStreet could not determine whether they funded and repaid, funded and failed, or never funded, and the site does not say.
Unsecured Credit to Very Small Businesses
Twelve of 222 listed bonds carry collateral; the remainder are unsecured obligations of restaurants, shops and service businesses with prospectus revenues typically in the hundreds of thousands and frequent net losses. Several prospectuses show senior creditors (bank notes, SBA or EIDL loans, landlord or investor notes) ahead of the bonds. The stated workout process is to work with the issuer, halt investor distributions at 30 days delinquent until cured, and for unsecured bonds 'recover as much investment as possible'. No reserve, guarantee, insurance or backup servicer is disclosed.
Issuer Reporting That Mostly Stops at the Prospectus
Of 106 issuers whose bond is confirmed funded and whose Form C predates April 2025, 17 have filed a Form C-AR (12 of them later a Form C-TR) and 89 neither; across all 206 older non-withdrawn issuers examined, 180 filed neither; six Form C-U progress updates exist across 271 offerings. Once a bond issues, the monthly payment counter is the only ongoing information about the business an investor is likely to get, and it arrives after the fact.
Fee Terms That Vary by Document
Investors pay nothing by ACH and 4% by card, which is clear. Issuer fees are stated as up to 6% (agreement and CFPORTAL), 4.5% (educational materials and the Geogreens prospectus) and 0% (program prospectuses), and the recurring fee is a $100 annual maintenance fee in the educational materials but $50 a month (offerings launched on or after July 1, 2024) or $25 a month (earlier offerings) in the current agreement. The issuer fee is the lender's credit issue because it comes from the same cash flow that repays the bonds, and an investor reading the educational materials would not learn the monthly figure the agreement now applies to pre-2024 bonds.
No Live Offerings and No Statement
SMBX funded 48 bonds in 2025 and seven in 2026, the last closing in April; its last Form C was filed April 6, 2026 for an auction that failed; a August 2026 Form C-U reports another offering closed unsuccessfully; and on September 16, 2026 the marketplace listed nothing. The blog's newest post is the 2024 wrap-up. Registrations are current and payments continue to be serviced, but a marketplace whose revenue is a percentage of new raises has, on the public record, had no new raises for five months and has not said whether it will. For bondholders that is a servicing-continuity question: collection, escrow accounting, investor communication and tax reporting all run through SMBX, and no backup arrangement is disclosed.
Small-Business Default on Unsecured Bonds
Issuers are restaurants, bakeries, breweries, gyms and shops with prospectus revenues typically under $2 million and frequent net losses; 95% of listed bonds are unsecured, and the CEO told the San Francisco Standard in 2022 that a default was 'only a matter of time'.
Why it matters
A bond that stops paying stops paying you: SMBX halts distributions at 30 days delinquent and, for unsecured bonds, has no asset to pursue. The dashboard's clean record covers listed bonds, and 53 auctions are not listed. At 10.5% to 11.5% on a 36-month amortizing bond, the interest earned over the life of the bond is roughly 17% of principal, so a single total loss erases the interest on five or six comparable bonds.
Mitigation / verification
Read the Financial Overview and existing-debt schedule in the Bond Prospectus; prefer issuers with positive net income and no senior lender ahead of you, or a secured bond. Check any prior SMBX bond by the same issuer on the dashboard. Keep positions small; the $10 unit exists so that you can.
Absent Auction Numbers and the Missing Loss History
Fifty-three of 275 auction numbers are absent from the dashboard with no explanation, and no delinquency, default or charge-off field is published.
Why it matters
The platform's outcome data is its strongest feature and its most important gap at once. If the absent auctions include defaulted bonds, the true loss rate is unknowable from public data; if they are administrative removals, the platform could say so and has not. Either way an investor cannot risk-adjust the coupon.
Mitigation / verification
Ask SMBX support in writing how many bonds have defaulted, been restructured or charged off, and why auction numbers are absent from the market view. Treat the visible record as an upper bound on performance until answered.
Servicing Continuity With No New Originations
No bond has funded since April 2026 and no offering was live in September 2026; SMBX has not stated its plans; all payment collection and escrow accounting run through the portal and its bank partners.
Why it matters
SMBX bonds are direct issuer obligations and legally survive the portal, but the machinery that turns an issuer's monthly payment into cash in your account is SMBX's. A venture-backed company with no visible new-raise revenue has an uncertain runway, and small-business loan books need active servicing precisely when they are stressed. No backup-servicer, wind-down or transfer arrangement is disclosed.
Mitigation / verification
Download every bond certificate, prospectus and payment history now, and reconcile 1099-INTs against your own records. Note each issuer's name and address from its prospectus so that a claim could be pursued directly if servicing ever lapsed. Watch the dashboard's payment counters and the EDGAR record for a CFPORTAL withdrawal.
Issuer Non-Reporting Under Regulation Crowdfunding
89 of 106 confirmed-funded older issuers filed neither an annual report nor a termination (180 of 206 across the wider population examined); six progress updates exist across 271 offerings.
Why it matters
Reg CF's ongoing disclosure regime is the investor's only statutory source of post-issuance financial information, and on this portal it barely operates. Amounts raised exist only on SMBX's dashboard, and updated financials do not exist at all for most issuers. The portal's educational materials promise annual reports within 120 days of fiscal year-end.
Mitigation / verification
Assume the prospectus financials are the last you will see. Use the monthly payment record as the operating signal it is, and discount the coupon for the absence of any other. If an issuer has filed a Form C-AR, read it; the 32 that exist include revenue and net income.
No Liquidity and Reinvestment Risk From Prepayment
There is no secondary market and ordinary resale is unavailable; terms run to 120 months; issuers may prepay, and 22 of 63 matured bonds did.
Why it matters
The only exit is the schedule. Monthly amortization softens this considerably, since principal returns from the first month, but the flip side is that the best issuers tend to refinance out early, returning your money when you least want it back and leaving the weaker credits in your portfolio longer.
Mitigation / verification
Invest only capital with no other call on it for the full stated term, and plan for cash to come back faster than the term implies. Reinvestment requires a withdrawal and a new order; there is no automatic reinvestment.
Biggest Misconceptions & What Actually Happens
- Read the Bond Prospectus, not the auction page: the financials, the existing-debt schedule, the collateral (if any) and SMBX's fee for that offering are all there and only there.
- Check the issuer's earlier SMBX bonds on the dashboard if it is a repeat issuer; payments made against due is the only performance history you will get.
- Fund by bank transfer; the 4% credit-card surcharge is non-refundable on canceled orders.
- Ask support what happened to the auction numbers the market no longer shows and how many bonds have defaulted; the site does not say.
- Confirm your Reg CF annual investment limit, which applies across all funding portals combined; SMBX's educational materials still quote the pre-2022 thresholds.
- Keep your own copies of certificates, payment histories and 1099-INTs; with no new offerings since April 2026, servicing continuity is the risk existing holders carry.
Regulatory & Legal Posture
Security Status
Securities Offerings under Regulation Crowdfunding (Section 4(a)(6)), Open to All Investors, Hosted by a Registered Funding Portal With No Located Disciplinary History
SMBX, Inc. is registered with the SEC as a funding portal (Form CFPORTAL filed November 28, 2018; amendments September 1, 2021 and December 26, 2024; SEC File No. 007-00129) and appears on FINRA's funding-portal roster with no termination as of August 2026. It intermediates bond offerings under Section 4(a)(6): each issuer files a Form C with financial statements tiered to the offering size, the offering must clear a stated minimum with subscriptions escrowed at North Capital Private Securities, investors may cancel until 48 hours before the deadline, and non-accredited investors are subject to annual limits. The portal's own CFPORTAL disclosures answer every disciplinary, criminal, regulatory and civil question in the negative, and AltStreet's legal scan (web, FINRA roster, EDGAR; PACER and state dockets not searched) located no FINRA, SEC, state or court action naming SMBX or its predecessor Peerhood.
The issuer side of the regime is where compliance breaks down on this portal: Rule 203 requires a final Form C-U within five business days of an offering's deadline and Rule 202 requires annual Form C-AR reports until the securities are repaid or the issuer qualifies to stop, and on EDGAR the SMBX issuer population shows six C-U filings across 271 offerings and annual reports from 17 of 106 confirmed-funded older issuers (26 of 206 across the wider population examined). What Reg CF does not provide in any case: no SIPC coverage, no registered-investment-company governance, and enforcement of the bond terms resting on the investor's standing as an unsecured creditor of a small operating business.
Disclosure Quality
Strong at the offering level, better than peers at the repayment level, and weak on everything the platform chooses not to show. Each Bond Prospectus prints the issuer's revenue, net income, assets, debts and creditors, the bond terms, the collateral if any, and SMBX's compensation for that offering. The market dashboard exposes every listed bond's amount raised, investors, payments made and matured status, which none of the Reg CF debt portals AltStreet has reviewed does. Against that: 53 auction numbers are absent without explanation and the dashboard has no delinquency or default field; the fee schedule is stated inconsistently across the agreement, the CFPORTAL filing, the educational materials and prospectuses; the investor educational materials cite superseded investment limits and a former escrow bank; and the company has published nothing about its status since the 2024 wrap-up despite five months without an offering.
Custody Model
Escrowed Subscriptions (North Capital Private Securities) + Direct Issuer Bonds + Serviced Repayments Held at Thread Bank
Regulatory Backing
During an auction, investor funds are held in escrow by North Capital Private Securities Corporation, a registered broker-dealer, and returned in about five business days if the minimum is not met or the order is canceled. On a successful close, proceeds move to the issuer less one month's withheld payment, and the investor holds bonds issued directly by the business. Monthly repayments are collected by SMBX and held in an FDIC-insured escrow account at Thread Bank (the qualified third party named in the 2024 CFPORTAL amendment; earlier materials name Boston Private Bank & Trust) until the investor withdraws.
SMBX states it does not hold, manage or possess investor funds. Platform failure would not extinguish bond claims against issuers, but no backup-servicer or continuity arrangement is disclosed, and no SIPC protection applies.
Tax Treatment
Reporting
Form 1099-INT (interest income)
SMBX issues a 1099-INT by January 31 for any account that accrued $10 or more of interest in the prior year, downloadable from the account for ten years. Interest is ordinary income in the year received; there are no K-1s.
Income Character
Ordinary Interest Income (taxed at marginal rates up to 37% federal)
Bond payments are interest on debt instruments, reported on 1099-INT and taxed as ordinary income at the investor's marginal federal rate plus any state tax. Principal repayments are a return of basis and are not taxable. Because the bonds amortize monthly, the interest portion of each payment declines over the term; on a 36-month 11% bond total interest is roughly 17% of principal, not 33%.
Limitation
For higher-bracket investors the after-tax yield compresses: an 11% coupon nets roughly 6.9% federally at the top marginal rate before state tax and before any applicable 3.8% net investment income tax. On the loss side, if a bona fide nonbusiness debt becomes wholly worthless an individual may generally claim a short-term capital loss subject to the annual net capital-loss limitation; a missed payment by itself does not establish worthlessness, and partial worthlessness is generally not deductible for nonbusiness debts. Fully taxable interest against deferred, capital-character loss recognition is unfavorable relative to the coupon. Confirm treatment with a tax adviser.
Special Considerations
- Interest is taxable as received on every bond regardless of size; investors holding many $10 bonds receive one consolidated 1099-INT.
- A bond that has stopped paying is not automatically a deductible loss; nonbusiness bad debts generally must become wholly worthless first, and are then short-term capital losses.
- The 4% credit-card surcharge is a cost of acquisition, not a deductible expense for most individuals; funding by bank transfer avoids it.
- Reg CF annual investment limits apply across all funding portals combined; SMBX's educational materials quote pre-2022 thresholds, so confirm the current figures yourself.
- State tax treatment depends on the investor's residence; this review does not establish state conclusions.
Account Suitability
Taxable
The practical default. Interest is ordinary income on a simple 1099-INT with no K-1 delays. Compute the after-tax yield at your own marginal rate on the actual amortizing cash flows, not rate times principal.
Roth IRA
Rarely practical rather than conceptually unsuitable: SMBX accounts are individual accounts linked to a bank or card, and self-directed IRA custodians supporting Reg CF bond positions are uncommon; custodian fees would dwarf the return on $10 to $1,000 positions.
Traditional IRA
Same practical barrier. Confirm with any self-directed custodian that it accepts funding-portal securities and how it would handle SMBX's servicing and valuation before assuming access.
HSA
Not offered by mainstream HSA providers; the multi-year illiquidity also sits badly with an HSA's purpose.
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AltStreet Data Layer
What the data actually shows
AltStreet reconstructed SMBX's 271 Form C offerings from EDGAR, captured the platform's dashboard for all 222 listed auctions, and read its prospectuses, agreements and registration record. These are the findings that matter most.
53 auction numbers are absent from the dashboard, and the record covers only what it returns
The market dashboard returns 222 auctions whose numbers run from 1 to 275, leaving 53 unaccounted for. Eleven failed auctions are still listed, so failure alone does not explain removal; seven Form C-W withdrawals exist on EDGAR. The endpoint carries no delinquency, default or charge-off field, and the site has no page for auctions it no longer returns. Archived auction URLs name 48 of the missing listings, 34 of them SEC-filed offerings, two formally withdrawn and three whose issuers later terminated Reg CF reporting; the archived pages hold no offering data.
What this means
The clean repayment record (63 matured with every payment made, 147 of 148 repaying within one payment of schedule) describes the bonds SMBX still shows. Until the platform explains the gaps, no loss rate can be computed and the coupon cannot be risk-adjusted from public data.
Issuers overwhelmingly skip the annual report Reg CF requires
Of 106 issuers whose bond is confirmed funded on the dashboard and whose Form C predates April 2025, 17 have filed at least one Form C-AR (12 of them later a Form C-TR) and 89 filed neither; across all 206 older non-withdrawn issuers examined, 180 filed neither, a filing gap rather than 180 proven violations since a close could not be confirmed for every unmatched issuer. Progress updates are rarer: six Form C-U across 271 offerings, when Rule 203 requires a final C-U within five business days of every deadline. The portal's educational materials tell investors annual reports will be available within 120 days of fiscal year-end.
What this means
Post-issuance, the prospectus financials are the last SEC-filed numbers most investors will see, and the amount a bond raised exists only on SMBX's own dashboard. The monthly payment counter is the sole ongoing signal.
No bond has funded since April 2026 and the company has not said why
Form C filings by SMBX issuers fell from 46 in 2025 to four in 2026, the last on April 6 for an auction that failed. Seven bonds funded in 2026 for $341,810 against 48 for $5.79 million in 2025. A August 2026 Form C-U reports an offering closed unsuccessfully.
On September 16, 2026 the marketplace listed nothing; the blog's newest post is the 2024 wrap-up. SEC and FINRA registrations are current and payment counters continue to update.
What this means
For prospective investors there is nothing to buy. For the holders of 148 repaying bonds ($17.8 million), the question is servicing continuity, since collection and escrow accounting run through SMBX and no backup arrangement is disclosed.
The visible repayment record is strong, and better disclosed than any Reg CF debt portal AltStreet has reviewed
All 63 matured bonds ($4.05 million of principal) show every scheduled payment made, 22 of them prepaid. Of 148 repaying bonds, 147 are within one monthly payment of schedule on AltStreet's comparison of payments made with months elapsed; the exception is two payments behind. Honeycomb, Wefunder and Republic publish no per-loan repayment data at all.
What this means
For an existing holder or a repeat-issuer decision, the dashboard is a real tool: check payments made against months elapsed on any bond before trusting the issuer again. The finding is bounded by the 53 missing auctions and the absence of a delinquency field.
Coupons doubled between the program era and the marketplace era
Median coupons were 7.5% in 2021 and 2022, when fee-waived Rebuild Bond Program offerings at 6% to 7.5% anchored the book, and 10.5%, 11% and 11.25% in 2023, 2024 and 2025 at ordinary marketplace pricing. Terms stayed at 36 or 60 months. The matured population is dominated by the earlier, cheaper cohort; the 2023 to 2025 cohort at 10.5% to 11.5%, mostly unsecured, is mid-term.
What this means
The platform's clean maturity record was earned mostly by pandemic-era program bonds; the bonds priced for ordinary small-business risk have not yet been through a full term. Read the year on any track-record claim.
The issuer fee is stated three ways and the recurring fee two ways
'Up to 6.0%' (investor agreement; CFPORTAL 'a 6% origination fee'), '4.5% service fee' plus '$100 annual maintenance fee' (educational materials), 4.50% (Geogreens prospectus), 0% (Maketto and Quesadilla Gorilla under program offerings), and, in the current agreement, a $50 monthly payment-processing fee on offerings launched on or after July 1, 2024 and $25 on earlier ones while outstanding.
What this means
Investors pay nothing by ACH either way, but the issuer's cost of capital is the lender's credit issue, and the agreement's monthly fee applies to pre-2024 bonds that the educational materials still describe as paying $100 a year. The per-offering prospectus is the only reliable statement of what a given issuer pays.
Data as of 2026-09-16 . AltStreet review evidence layer . Public-source analysis
Full datasetAltStreet Weekly
This analysis runs on AltStreet's filing database
271 Form C offerings, 222 dashboard auctions with repayment progress, and 63 realized outcomes reconciled for one portal. The same data layer covers 100+ alternative investment platforms.
So What?
What to do differently because of this.
What this means
The dashboard is the most outcome data of any Reg CF debt portal AltStreet has reviewed, and it is still partial
What to do
Use it. Before you buy any bond, look at the issuer's earlier bonds if it has them (repeat issuers are marked 2 and 3) and check payments made against months elapsed. Then remember that 53 auction numbers are absent and that the endpoint has no delinquency flag, so the absence of visible trouble is not the absence of trouble.
What this means
The prospectus financials are the last numbers you will get
What to do
Read the Financial Overview table and the existing-debt schedule in the Bond Prospectus. Most SMBX issuers never file the annual report Reg CF requires, so a bond's monthly payment status becomes your only ongoing information the day it issues.
What this means
Unsecured is the default, and the 30-day halt is the whole workout process
What to do
Only 12 of 222 listed bonds are secured. For the rest, SMBX's stated remedy is to work with the issuer to get current and, failing that, to recover what it can. Size positions so a total loss on any one bond is trivial; the $10 unit makes that easy.
What this means
No live offerings changes the question from whether to buy to what happens to what you hold
What to do
Repayment servicing runs through SMBX, a venture-backed private company that has not announced its status. Download your bond certificates and payment history now, keep the 1099-INTs, and note that the bonds are direct obligations of the issuers even if the portal changes.
Decision Fit
Investor Fit
Who this works for, who it does not, and what level of patience and complexity tolerance the platform really demands.
Existing SMBX Bondholders
This review is most useful to people who already hold SMBX bonds. The instrument is sound and the dashboard lets you check your issuers' payment status against schedule. The things to do now are administrative: keep copies of certificates, prospectuses and payment histories, note each issuer's legal name and address, watch payment counters monthly, and ask SMBX in writing about its plans, since no offering has funded since April 2026 and no continuity arrangement is disclosed.
Community Lenders Placing $10 to $500 per Business
If offerings resume, SMBX is the best-designed vehicle for this that AltStreet has reviewed: $10 units, monthly cash back, no investor fee, a prospectus with the business's numbers, and a dashboard that shows how its earlier bonds paid. The diligence burden is reading that prospectus, because most issuers never file another financial statement. The fit is neutral rather than good only because there is nothing to buy today.
Non-Accredited Yield Seekers Building a Diversified Note Book
SMBX's 10.5% to 11.5% coupons on unsecured small-business bonds are competitive with Honeycomb's 12% median, cost nothing to buy by ACH, and amortize monthly, which shortens effective duration. Against that: 95% unsecured, an unknown loss history behind 53 absent auction numbers, and no pipeline. Groundfloor offers comparable retail access with published loan-level performance; Honeycomb has live campaigns and richer collateral disclosure at a 3% investor fee.
Yield-Focused Investors Comparing on Headline Rate
Coupon on SMBX tracks the year and the program more than the credit: the 6% to 7.5% bonds are pandemic-era fee-waived program cohorts, the 11%+ bonds are ordinary marketplace pricing. A 36-month amortizing bond at 11% earns about 17% of principal in total interest, so one total loss on an unsecured bond erases five or six winners. Sorting by rate does not select for safety here.
Investors Requiring Liquidity or a Published Loss History
No resale, terms to ten years, and a performance record that covers only the bonds the dashboard returns. Anyone who may need the capital back, or whose process requires a defined default and recovery rate, should look elsewhere.
Investors Using Retirement Accounts
SMBX accounts are individual accounts funded from a bank or card; self-directed IRA custodians supporting Reg CF bonds are uncommon and their fees would consume the return on positions this small.
Tradeoffs
Key Tradeoffs
The attraction of pre-IPO access is real, but every benefit comes bundled with a corresponding liquidity, transparency, or pricing cost.
Instrument Clarity vs. Credit Opacity
Every SMBX bond is the same well-specified instrument, and the prospectus shows the business's numbers at issuance. After that, the issuer almost never files again: 89 of 106 confirmed-funded older issuers filed neither an annual report nor a termination. You know exactly what you bought and very little about how the business is doing until a payment is late.
Repayment Visibility vs. Absent Auctions
SMBX shows more outcome data per bond than any Reg CF debt portal AltStreet has reviewed, and 63 matured bonds with every payment made is a real record. But 53 auction numbers are absent from the same dashboard with no explanation, so the record is of the bonds it returns, and the platform could resolve the question with one sentence it has not written.
Zero Investor Fee vs. Issuer Cost of Capital
Investors keep the whole coupon by ACH, the structural contrast with Honeycomb's 3%. The issuer pays up to 6% up front and $50 a month for the life of the bond, which raises its cost of capital above the coupon and comes out of the cash flow that repays you. The current agreement applies the monthly fee, at $25, to bonds issued before July 2024 as well.
Monthly Amortization vs. Prepayment
Principal comes back from the first month, which makes a 36-month bond far less locked than its term suggests. The same feature means good issuers refinance out early (22 of 63 matured bonds were prepaid) and the weaker ones stay, so a passive portfolio drifts toward its worse credits.
Reg CF Protections vs. a Portal Without a Pipeline
Escrow, cancellation rights, a public prospectus, FINRA-member intermediation and investment limits are real front-end protections. None of them governs what happens if the portal servicing 148 repaying bonds stops operating, and SMBX has funded nothing since April 2026 without saying why.
Avoid
Who This Is Not For
This section should be read as a filter, not an afterthought. If you need income, simplicity, or near-term access to capital, the structure is working against you.
Investors Needing Liquidity Before Maturity
There is no secondary market and ordinary resale is unavailable; the only practical exits are cancellation before close and the monthly schedule. Terms run to 120 months.
Investors Who Would Fund by Credit Card
The 4% surcharge is non-refundable and turns a 36-month 11% bond's roughly 17% lifetime interest into 13%. Bank transfer is free.
Investors Requiring a Published Default and Recovery History
The dashboard covers 222 listed bonds and omits 53; it has no default field, and the platform publishes no loss or recovery figures.
Anyone Who Wants to Invest Today
No offering was live on September 16, 2026, none has funded since April, and the company has not stated whether new listings are coming.
Set-and-Forget Investors
Issuer disclosure ends at the prospectus for most bonds, and continuity of servicing is now the live question. Holding SMBX bonds means keeping your own records and watching the payment counters.
Editorial View
AltStreet Perspective
The compressed version of the review: what matters, what marketing tends to obscure, and how we would frame the platform for a serious allocator.
Verdict
SMBX designed the cleanest retail small-business bond AltStreet has reviewed: ten dollars a bond, a fixed coupon, monthly principal and interest from the first month, a prospectus that prints the business's financials and its other debts, no fee to invest by bank transfer, and a dashboard that shows whether each listed bond is paying. Across 211 funded bonds and $21.84 million since 2019, the bonds it still shows are almost all paying and 63 have paid off. The doubts are about the frame around that picture. Fifty-three auction numbers are absent from its dashboard without a word. Issuers overwhelmingly skip the annual report the rules require. The fee schedule depends on which document you read. And the marketplace has funded nothing since April 2026 while the company says nothing about what comes next. The product deserved a platform that finished the job of transparency it started.
Positioning
AltStreet reconstructed 271 SMBX offerings by 250 issuers from EDGAR, captured the platform's dashboard for all 222 listed auctions, and read three prospectuses, the agreements and the educational materials. For existing holders: keep records, watch payment counters, and ask about continuity. For prospective investors: if offerings resume, this is a good instrument for small, widely spread community lending, provided you read the prospectus, prefer secured or senior-unencumbered issuers, and price the coupon as unsecured small-business risk with an unknown loss history behind it.
The Bottom Line
The best-designed small-business bond AltStreet has reviewed, on a platform that shows you every returned bond's payments and nothing about 53 absent auction numbers, and that has not sold a bond since April.
Action
Next Steps
If you still want to engage after reading the review, these are the practical next moves that reduce avoidable mistakes.
If you hold SMBX bonds: download every certificate, prospectus and payment history now, reconcile against your 1099-INTs, and record each issuer's legal name and address from its prospectus.
Ask SMBX support in writing whether new offerings are planned, what happened to auctions no longer shown on the market, and how many bonds have defaulted or been restructured.
For any future offering, read the Bond Prospectus first: the Financial Overview, the existing-debt schedule, the collateral line and the compensation disclosure are all there and nowhere else.
Check a repeat issuer's earlier bond on the dashboard before lending again; payments made against due is the only performance history available.
Fund by bank transfer only; the 4% card surcharge is not refunded on cancellation.
Confirm your Reg CF annual investment limit at the current thresholds; SMBX's educational materials quote the pre-2022 figures.
Size every position so that a total loss is trivial, and expect prepayments: 22 of 63 matured bonds paid off early.
Final Answer
What this means for your decision.
Finding
The visible repayment record is clean; 53 auction numbers are absent from it
Meaning
Every one of the 222 bonds SMBX lists shows its payments made against payments due. 63 have repaid in full, 148 are repaying, and 147 of those are within one monthly payment of schedule on AltStreet's count. But the auction numbers run to 275, so 53 are absent. AltStreet recovered archived listings for 48 of them, including 34 SEC-filed offerings and two formal withdrawals, but their outcomes cannot be reconstructed and nothing on the site addresses them. The clean record is the record of what is shown.
Action
Treat the dashboard as a repayment ledger for surviving bonds, not a loss history for the platform. Ask support directly how many bonds have defaulted or been written off and why auction numbers are absent from the market view; the answer, and whether one comes, is the diligence data point the site does not provide.
Finding
Investors pay nothing to invest by bank transfer, and issuers pay up to 6%
Meaning
Unlike Honeycomb, which charges investors 3% by ACH, SMBX charges investors no fee when funding by bank account (4% by credit card). Issuers pay a capital-raise fee of up to 6% of the amount raised, stated per offering in the prospectus (4.5% on one read in full, 0% on two program offerings), plus, since July 2024, a $50 monthly payment-processing fee ($25 for older bonds) for as long as the bond is outstanding.
Action
Fund by ACH only. Read the compensation line in the bond prospectus rather than the help center, because the platform's own fee statements differ across documents (6%, 4.5%, 0%; $100 a year versus $25 to $50 a month).
Finding
Most SMBX issuers never filed the annual report Regulation Crowdfunding requires
Meaning
The obligation falls on issuers that sold securities, so start with the 106 issuers whose bond is confirmed funded on the dashboard and whose Form C predates April 2025: 17 have ever filed a Form C-AR annual report (12 of them later terminating reporting) and 89 filed neither. Across the wider 206 older non-withdrawn issuers examined, 180 filed neither; because a successful close could not be established for every unmatched issuer, that wider figure measures the filing gap rather than proving 180 violations. Progress updates are rarer still: six Form C-U filings across 271 offerings, so the amount each bond raised is visible on SMBX's dashboard and nowhere on EDGAR. These are issuer obligations, but the pattern is portal-wide.
Action
Do not expect updated financial statements after you invest; the prospectus financials are the last SEC-filed numbers you will likely see. Weight the monthly payment record accordingly, since it is the only ongoing signal.
Finding
Originations have stopped, and the platform has not said why
Meaning
SMBX funded 48 bonds for $5.79 million in 2025 and seven bonds for $341,810 in 2026, the last closing in April. Its last Form C was filed April 6, 2026 for an offering that failed, a August 2026 close reported no funding, and on September 16, 2026 the marketplace showed no live offering. The blog's newest post is the 2024 wrap-up. The portal remains registered with the SEC and FINRA and repayments continue to be serviced.
Action
If you hold SMBX bonds, your exposure is to servicing continuity: repayments flow through SMBX to an escrow account at Thread Bank, and no backup-servicer arrangement is disclosed. Keep your own record of each bond's schedule and 1099-INTs. If you are considering investing, there is currently nothing to buy.
If you read nothing else
SMBX built the most legible retail small-business bond product AltStreet has reviewed: $10 units, fixed 6% to 11.5% coupons, monthly amortization, a public prospectus with the issuer's financials and debt schedule, no investor fee by ACH, and a dashboard that shows every listed bond's repayment progress. Across 211 funded bonds and $21.84 million since 2019, the bonds still listed are almost all paying on time and 63 have repaid in full. The reservations are about what is not shown: 53 auction numbers absent from the dashboard with outcomes that cannot be reconstructed, an 84% rate of confirmed-funded older issuers skipping their required annual reports, fee terms stated three ways, and a marketplace that has funded nothing since April 2026 without saying whether it intends to again. A well-designed instrument on a platform whose next chapter is unwritten.
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Deal Intelligence →Appendix
Sources, Disclosures, and Supporting Context
The lower section is structured like a report appendix: relationship context first, adjacent reading second, and evidence last.
Report Appendix
Disclosure
Relationship and compensation context
+
Report Appendix
Disclosure
Relationship and compensation context
Report Appendix
Comparison Guides
Head-to-head guides featuring SMBX
+
Report Appendix
Comparison Guides
Head-to-head guides featuring SMBX
Report Appendix
Related Resources
Adjacent platform comparisons, frameworks, and category links
+
Report Appendix
Related Resources
Adjacent platform comparisons, frameworks, and category links
Further Reading
Related Resources
Adjacent frameworks and reviews that help place the platform in a broader allocation or due-diligence context.
Explore Asset Class
Small-Business Bonds (Restaurants, Food & Beverage, Retail, Services)Similar Platform Reviews
- Honeycomb Credit
The closest structural comparable and the one with a live pipeline: Reg CF small-business loans at roughly $100, quarterly repayment, richer collateral disclosure, and a 3% investor fee by ACH that SMBX does not charge.
- Groundfloor
Retail debt notes with full loan-level repayment and default history published and first-position real estate liens; the performance-transparency benchmark SMBX's dashboard approaches but does not meet.
- Mainvest
A Reg CF small-business revenue-share portal that ceased in 2024; the reference case for what happens to investor servicing when a portal stops originating.
Report Appendix
Tracked Offerings
4 SMBX offerings with disclosed terms in the AltStreet database
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Report Appendix
Tracked Offerings
4 SMBX offerings with disclosed terms in the AltStreet database
Report Appendix
Evidence & Methodology
Sources, scope, and how the review was assembled
+
Report Appendix
Evidence & Methodology
Sources, scope, and how the review was assembled
ASReview Evidence
Methodology
Five primary sources. (1) An SEC EDGAR census of every Form C naming SMBX as intermediary (portal CIK 0001707214): 271 filings by 250 issuers from 2019-08-02 to 2026-04-06, plus every lifecycle filing by those issuers in AltStreet's market-wide ledger (121 Form C/A, 6 Form C-U, 32 Form C-AR, 21 Form C-TR, 7 Form C-W, and 19 Form D or D/A). (2) A 2026-09-16 capture of SMBX's public market dashboard endpoint (api.thesmbx.com/api/v1.2/market/dashboard), which returned 222 auctions with amount raised, investor allocations, yield, term, minimum and maximum, payments made against scheduled, secured flag, status (settlement, MATURED, failed) and early-repaid and fully-paid flags. (3) Three Bond Prospectuses read in full (Maketto, LLC Series A 01-2027; Quesadilla Gorilla, Inc. Series A 01-2026; Geoponica Greens LLC Series A 07-2026), the SMBX Agreements and Disclosures (Terms of Service, Investor Agreement, Business Agreement), the Investor Educational Materials, the help center and 14 site pages captured 2026-09-16. (4) The portal's registration record: Form CFPORTAL of 2018-11-28 and amendments of 2021-09-01 and 2024-12-26, the company's 2021 Form D, and FINRA's funding-portal roster. (5) The SMBX blog including the 2024 wrap-up one-sheet, and press coverage (BusinessWire, ImpactAlpha, San Francisco Standard) cited as attributed. Repayment progress is AltStreet's heuristic: payments made compared with months elapsed since the auction end date minus one, capped at the term. EDGAR issuers and dashboard auctions were matched by normalized name; 146 of 271 matched, and unmatched populations were analyzed separately.
Scope
Offering, terms and repayment-progress data for the 222 auctions SMBX lists, and the SEC filing record for all 250 issuers. Not in scope and not publicly available: the status of the 53 auction numbers absent from the dashboard; any default, charge-off or recovery figure; per-bond cash-flow history (the endpoint gives payment counts, not amounts or dates); platform financials; and the company's plans. Amounts raised are the dashboard's figures, which are the platform's own and are not corroborated by Form C-U filings for 265 of 271 offerings. Company-reported and press figures are labeled as such.
Key Findings
- *EDGAR census: 271 Form C filings by 250 issuers name SMBX (CIK 0001707214) as intermediary, 2019-08-02 to 2026-04-06; by year 1, 12, 33, 56, 61, 58, 46 and 4 (2026). All are debt at $10 per unit. Declared minimums sum to $10,637,800 and maximums to $45,566,500. Jurisdiction of incorporation: California 102, D.C. 32, Oregon 30, Delaware 16, Texas 11, New York 11.
- *Dashboard census (2026-09-16): 222 auctions, numbered 1 to 275, so 53 numbers absent. 211 funded: $21,844,170 raised from 25,510 investor allocations; median raise $73,330; median 112 investors per bond, maximum 396; average allocation about $856. 11 failed to reach their minimum.
- *Funded volume by close year: 2019 1 bond $139,380; 2020 6 / $488,130; 2021 16 / $1,458,490; 2022 41 / $5,271,110; 2023 39 / $3,718,190; 2024 53 / $4,635,950; 2025 48 / $5,791,110; 2026 7 / $341,810 (through April). Median coupon by year: 8%, 9%, 7.5%, 7.5%, 10.5%, 11%, 11.25%, 11.5%.
- *Status: 148 in settlement ($17,797,960 raised, 18,757 allocations); 63 MATURED ($4,046,210, 6,753 allocations), 22 of them flagged early repaid ($1,509,660, average original term 42 months); 11 failed. All 63 matured bonds show payments made equal to payments scheduled.
- *Repayment heuristic on the 148 settling bonds (payments made vs months since auction end minus one, capped at term): 147 within one payment of schedule; one two payments behind (Away Days Brewing, Oregon, 30 of 60 after 32 expected, $263,500, 10.5%). Eight bonds show all payments made but no fully-paid flag (Livie and Luca 60/60, Quesadilla Gorilla 60/60, Mira Zaki Photography 36/36, Trini Vybez 48/48, Snackrilege 36/36, Hacking Solutions 36/36, Bad Walter's 36/36, Donisima 23/24), read as status lag.
- *Terms and coupons (211 funded): 36 months 93, 60 months 63, 24 months 20, 48 months 17, 84 months 7, 72 months 3, 120 months 1, under 24 months 6. Coupons cluster at 11.25% (33 bonds), 11% (27), 7.5% (24), 10.75% (22), 11.5% (20); range 6% to 11.5%. Secured: 12 listed, 11 funded, $2,026,860.
- *Largest bonds: Boichik Bagels $1,070,000 (2022, 7.5%, 84 months, 396 investors, secured); Rose Pizzeria, Connect Wellness and Flora Grubb Gardens $500,000; Atelier Restaurant $485,340; Pete's Bagels $432,470; Breadbelly $400,000 (the 2024 wrap-up's 'largest raise on SMBX'); Palm City Wines $400,000.
- *Issuer compliance (EDGAR, all 250 issuers): 6 Form C-U across 271 offerings (Bernal Cutlery 2019 $139,380; Our Life Foods 2020 $41,251; Rangoon Restaurant Concepts 2021 $101,600; OWB Holdings 2023 $119,956; Hard Training Fitness Club 2024 $26,550; Eunoia 2026 closed unsuccessfully); 32 Form C-AR by 27 issuers (by year 1, 1, 3, 4, 11, 3, 6, 1, 2 for 2018 to 2026); 21 Form C-TR, 13 of them in May to August 2022; 7 Form C-W. Of 127 issuers matched to a funded dashboard auction, 106 have a Form C before 2025-04: 17 filed a C-AR (12 of them later a C-TR) and 89 neither. Of all 206 issuers with a Form C before 2025-04 and no withdrawal, 26 filed a C-AR (20 of them later a C-TR) and 180 neither; every C-TR filer had first filed a C-AR, and a close could not be confirmed for the unmatched issuers.
- *Fees as stated: investor agreement and CFPORTAL 'up to 6.0%' / '6% origination fee'; educational materials '4.5% service fee' and '$100 annual maintenance fee'; Geogreens prospectus 4.50%; Maketto and Quesadilla Gorilla 0% under program offerings; agreement: $50 monthly payment-processing fee for offerings launched on or after 2024-07-01, $25 for earlier offerings, while outstanding. Investors: 0% by bank account, 4% by card (max $5,000 per investor per week), $10 minimum withdrawal.
- *Registration: CFPORTAL 2018-11-28; CFPORTAL/A 2021-09-01 and 2024-12-26 (address to 486 15th Ave, San Francisco; qualified third party Thread Bank; compensation description 6% origination fee; all disciplinary questions 'N'; Lozano control person). FINRA roster: SMBX, Inc., SEC File 7-129, active as of 2026-08-03. Legal scan 2026-09-16: no FINRA AWC, SEC, state or court action located; PACER and state dockets not searched.
- *Servicing terms (Investor Agreement 3.4.2): SMBX 'does not guarantee that monthly payments will be made on time or at all'; on a missed payment it works with the issuer to cure; uncured after 30 days, 'monthly payments to investors will be halted at the 30-day delinquency point until the Small & Medium Business or Startup gets back on track'; payments are released only as received; 'a pending payment does not always mean the Bond-issuing small business has financial difficulty'.
- *Absent auction numbers (Internet Archive CDX index of thesmbx.com/app/auction/*, 487 captured URLs, 228 distinct names): 48 archived auction names are absent from the 2026-09-16 dashboard (about 45 distinct businesses); 34 match a Form C on EDGAR (Alchemy 2023, Aurora Market II 2023, Black Hammer Brewing 2 2020, Culmination Brewing 2020, Carmelita 2022, Spitz 2023, Tazga 2022, West Coast Pretzels 2022 among them); two are Form C-W withdrawals (Cape Cod Cellars 2025, Jule's Foods 2021); three issuers filed Form C-TR (Sticky Fingers Sweets & Eats 2022, Ohiya Networks 2023, Kai's Kookies 2022). Archived pages are application shells without offering data, so funded-versus-cancelled status of the removed listings is unknown.
- *Activity in 2026: Form Cs filed 2026-01 to 2026-04 (4); last funded bonds closed April 2026; Cache (San Francisco, $450,000 maximum, 10%, 60 months) failed 2026-05-20; Eunoia LLC Form C-U 2026-08-19 'Offering closed unsuccessfully'; no live offering on 2026-09-16; newest blog post the 2024 wrap-up (March 2025); site footer '2026, SMBX, Inc.'.
AltStreet Data Layer
AltStreet Form C census + market dashboard capture + realized outcomes (portal CIK 0001707214, 2026-09-16)
AltStreet's SMBX dataset holds one deal record per listed auction (222) with rate, term, amount raised, investor count and repayment progress from the platform's dashboard, the Form C census for the portal CIK, and 63 realized-outcome rows for matured bonds recorded as repaid in full per the platform. No IRR is claimed: the dashboard reports payment counts, not cash flows, and the platform publishes no default, charge-off or recovery data. The 53 absent auction numbers are not represented and their outcomes are unknown.
- Offerings tracked: 271 Form C by 250 issuers (EDGAR) · 222 auctions (dashboard) · 211 funded · 11 failed · 53 auction numbers absent
- Amount raised (dashboard): $21,844,170 across 211 funded bonds · median $73,330 · max $1,070,000 · 25,510 investor allocations (~$856 average)
- Outcomes: 63 MATURED ($4,046,210; 22 early repaid) · 148 repaying ($17,797,960) · 147 of 148 within one payment of schedule · 1 two payments behind · no delinquency or default field published
- Coupons: 6% to 11.5% · median 10.5% · 2025 median 11.25% · terms 5 to 120 months (36: 93 bonds · 60: 63 · 24: 20 · 48: 17) · 12 secured
- Volume by close year: $0.14M (2019) · $0.49M · $1.46M · $5.27M (2022) · $3.72M · $4.64M · $5.79M (2025) · $0.34M (2026 through April)
- Issuer filings: C/A 121 · C-U 6 · C-AR 32 (27 issuers) · C-TR 21 · C-W 7 · Form D 16 / D/A 3 · 89 of 106 confirmed-funded older issuers (180 of 206 examined) filed neither C-AR nor C-TR
- Fees: investor 0% ACH / 4% card · issuer up to 6% (4.5% and 0% observed) + $50/month (post-2024-07-01) or $25/month (earlier) while outstanding
- Name reconciliation: 146 of 271 Form C filings matched to a dashboard auction by normalized name; legal-vs-trade-name mismatches account for the rest
- Coverage boundary: dashboard omits 53 auctions and any delinquency field; C-U corroboration of amounts raised exists for 6 of 271 offerings; no platform financials
Source: SEC EDGAR Form C family filings (intermediary SMBX, CIK 0001707214) + api.thesmbx.com market dashboard capture + prospectuses and agreements + AltStreet platform database, September 2026
Primary Source Pages
Comparable Platforms
- Honeycomb Credit
Same Reg CF small-business debt idea with a live pipeline, quarterly repayment and richer collateral disclosure, but a 3% investor fee by ACH and no per-loan repayment data; SMBX charges investors nothing and shows repayment progress.
- Groundfloor
Retail real estate notes with full loan-level repayment and default history and first-position liens; the transparency standard SMBX's dashboard approaches.
- Mainvest
A ceased Reg CF small-business portal; the reference case for servicing and investor communication after originations stop.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
High-intent search questions answered directly, without making users hunt through the full review.
What is SMBX and how do Small Business Bonds work?
SMBX is a Regulation Crowdfunding funding portal, registered with the SEC (File No. 007-00129) and a FINRA member, where small businesses sell bonds to the public in $10 units. Each bond pays a fixed rate, 6% to 11.5% across the 211 bonds funded since 2019, over a fixed term, usually 36 or 60 months, with principal and interest paid monthly starting one month after issuance. Orders sit in escrow at North Capital Private Securities until the auction clears its minimum; repayments are collected by SMBX and held for you at Thread Bank until you withdraw. Interest is reported on a 1099-INT. Anyone with a US bank account can invest, subject to Reg CF's annual limits for non-accredited investors.
Is SMBX legit, and has it been in trouble with regulators?
SMBX, Inc. (formerly Peerhood, LLC) has been an SEC-registered funding portal since November 2018 and appears on FINRA's funding-portal roster with no termination as of August 2026. Its registration filings answer every disciplinary question in the negative, and AltStreet's September 2026 legal scan found no FINRA, SEC, state or court action against the company (PACER and state dockets were not searched). The concerns in this review are about disclosure and status rather than misconduct: 53 auctions are missing from the platform's dashboard without explanation, most issuers do not file their required annual reports, and no bond has funded since April 2026.
Has SMBX had any defaults?
Not that the platform shows. Its public dashboard lists 222 auctions; all 63 matured bonds show every scheduled payment made, and of 148 bonds still repaying, 147 are within one monthly payment of schedule on AltStreet's comparison of payments made with months elapsed. But the dashboard has no default, delinquency or charge-off field, and 53 of the 275 numbered auctions are not shown at all, with nothing on the site explaining why. Archived auction URLs name most of the missing listings, and 34 of them were SEC-filed offerings, but the archived pages hold no offering data, so their outcomes cannot be read. The CEO told the San Francisco Standard in July 2022 that SMBX had no defaults yet but that one was 'only a matter of time'. Until SMBX explains the absent auction numbers, the visible record is a record of the bonds it returns.
What fees does SMBX charge?
Investors pay nothing to invest by bank transfer and a non-refundable 4% surcharge by credit card; withdrawals are free from $10. Businesses pay SMBX a capital-raise fee of up to 6% of the amount raised, disclosed in each Bond Prospectus (4.5% on one AltStreet read; 0% on pandemic-era program offerings), plus, under the current agreement, a monthly payment-processing fee of $50 on offerings launched from July 1, 2024 and $25 on older ones for as long as the bond is outstanding. The platform's documents state the issuer fee inconsistently (up to 6%, 4.5%, or a $100 annual maintenance fee in the educational materials), so the prospectus for a specific offering is the reliable source.
Are SMBX bonds secured?
Mostly not. Twelve of the 222 listed bonds are marked secured, meaning backed by equipment, inventory, property or sometimes cash that SMBX would work to sell in a default. The other 210 are unsecured obligations of the business, and many prospectuses show senior lenders ahead of the bonds, such as bank notes, SBA or EIDL loans, or landlord and investor notes. The prospectus for each offering lists the collateral, if any, and the issuer's existing debts.
Can I sell SMBX bonds before they mature?
Not on any market. SMBX states that bonds cannot be resold or transferred, and no venue exists to trade them; the agreement allows limited transfers to family members or accredited investors on request, as Regulation Crowdfunding's transfer exceptions permit, but in practice you hold to maturity. The mitigating feature is monthly amortization: principal starts coming back with the first payment, so a 36-month bond returns roughly a third of principal within a year. Issuers may also prepay, and 22 of the 63 matured bonds did.
Is SMBX still operating?
Its registrations are current, its site and dashboard are live, and repayments on existing bonds continue to be serviced. But no bond has funded since April 2026, its last Form C (April 6, 2026) was for an offering that failed, a August 2026 filing reports another unsuccessful close, the marketplace showed no live offering on September 16, 2026, and the company's newest blog post is the 2024 wrap-up. SMBX has not published any statement about pausing, pivoting or winding down. Existing holders should keep their own records and ask the company about servicing continuity.
What returns can I expect from SMBX bonds?
The coupon is fixed and paid monthly: 6% to 11.5% across the funded book, with a median of 10.5% overall and 11.25% on bonds closed in 2025. Because the bonds amortize, total interest over the life of a 36-month bond at 11% is roughly 17% of the principal invested, not 33%. Those are contractual rates on unsecured small-business debt; the platform publishes no default or loss statistics, so realized returns net of losses cannot be stated. Interest is taxed as ordinary income.
How does SMBX compare to Honeycomb Credit?
Both are Reg CF portals for small-business debt. SMBX sells $10 bonds that amortize monthly, charges investors nothing by bank transfer, and shows repayment progress on every listed bond; it has no offerings live in September 2026 and 53 auction numbers absent from its dashboard with unknown outcomes. Honeycomb offers loans at roughly $100 with mostly quarterly repayment, discloses collateral and lien position in more detail, has a live pipeline of more than 100 campaigns, charges investors 3% by ACH, and publishes no per-loan repayment data at all. Groundfloor, in real estate debt, remains the retail benchmark for published loan-level performance.
Who should invest on SMBX, and who should avoid it?
Well-suited, if offerings resume: community lenders placing small amounts across many local businesses who will read the Bond Prospectus and check any earlier bond by the same issuer on the dashboard; non-accredited investors who want monthly fixed income with no investor fee. Should avoid: anyone who needs liquidity (no resale, terms to ten years), anyone who requires a published default and recovery history (none exists and 53 auction numbers are absent with outcomes that cannot be reconstructed), anyone who would fund by credit card, and, at the moment, anyone who wants to invest at all, since nothing is listed. Existing bondholders should treat servicing continuity as their live risk and keep independent records.