Since we opened up to Europe last November, a lot has happened. Investment through the platform has increased more than 4X and we’re averaging just over £1 million per month in funded campaigns. Around 35% of new investors have come from outside of the UK – we are very proud to now have users from almost every country in Europe (although we are still looking for our first investors both from Liechtenstein and the Holy See, but it shouldn’t be long before people there start using Seedrs). We beat the previous equity crowdfunding world record by raising £2.6 million for our own campaign from 909 investors, and are very happy that our record’s since been broken by British winery and craft brewer, Chapel Down. Because we just can’t settle, we also introduced – for the first time ever in equity crowdfunding – convertible equity investment and equity crowdfunding for a listed company. All of these are tremendous accomplishments, but there has been something missing.
We lacked support for investing and raising investment in euros. Not anymore.
We have never been shy about our international ambitions and, in line with that, Seedrs is now a fully multi-currency platform, with support for euros and British pounds (more currencies coming soon).
While it hasn’t put off European investment activity, this has been a feature in high demand from our users for quite some time. With part of the Seedrs team being based outside of the UK, we were definitely sympathetic.
Although hacking support for euros may seem like something that could have been done in less than 10 months, we strongly believe in truly excelling in terms of usability and simplicity for our users. So, quickly implementing a half-baked solution that would make the whole experience clunky and unreliable was not an option. We took our time. We wanted to learn how users from outside the UK were using the platform and we wanted to develop a solution that was simple, easy and reliable.
Any Seedrs user can now deposit, invest and create campaigns in either currency.
More importantly, we have created what we believe is a seamless experience and a smooth exchange between the two currencies. To achieve this, we worked together with our good friends at Currency Cloud (who process more than $7B in payments every year, across more than 40 currencies) to provide you with the ability to instantly, and securely, move funds between euros and GBP.
So, if you login to your Investment Account, you will see that you now have a GBP and EUR balance (at least for the time being, one of them is probably at 0). When you click “Deposit”, we pre-select the account that has most of your funds – but you can choose to deposit directly in another currency. If you already have funds, let’s say, in your GBP account and want to pay for an investment made in EUR (the first EUR campaign is right around the corner!) all you have to do is click “Transfer” to move funds from one account to the other. This action is completed instantaneously and funds will be displayed in your Seedrs account. It really couldn’t be simpler.
Our hope is that this improves your experience with Seedrs – especially for users in Europe.
