Cashboard, a Berlin-based online investment startup, announced that it has raised €3 million from a Luxembourg-based fintech fund Digital Space Ventures and from its existing investors Redalpine Capital and Earlybird. A recent KPMG and CB Insights report stated that German fintech is attracting more investment than British fintech in 2016. Funding will go toward expanding Cashboard’s team and scaling up the platform with plans to expand operations in Asia and Eastern Europe.
“Germany in the last year, it has moved to be one of the core areas for fintech,” explained Cashboard Founder and CEO Robert Henker in a recent Business Insider interview. “Europe, in general, is quite segmented, which means it’s hard for European startups to reach scale compared to the US. With fintech, it’s quite easy in Germany because it’s a good continental market. The legislation, although quite fragmented, is relatively harmonized in Europe…All the investors I talk to in the UK say we don’t know clearly the implications of that [Brexit] yet. It is possible that there are also conversations going on regarding Frankfurt, Berlin, and Paris. I think that even if Brexit will come in a way that people don’t want, Frankfurt or Berlin will not be the next London. But what I experience is that UK founders and the UK…The main USP is quite simple: we are the only provider independent and asset class comprehensive platform in Europe, meaning that whereas others sell their own stuff, we are the only provider of an independent marketplace. With us clients can invest from one bank account into all the traditional stuff like bonds, stocks, core money, ETFs, as well as online and alternative investments such as peer-to-peer lending.”
Founded in 2014, Cashboard allows people to invest their money across a variety of instruments and a variety of providers and claims over 10,000 customers with 10-20% growth each month, according to the BI article.
“We have already had international clients from France, UK, but also China, Russia, Brazil,” Henkers opined to BI. “Although our website is not available in English, they come, maybe by word of mouth. Our biggest international client is Chinese,” added Hecker. “Our Chinese clients, we found out later, came through Chinese people who work for German corporations — an engineer for Audi for example. They opened up an account with us and then introduced them to their family and friends. Our Chinese clients, we found out later, came through Chinese people who work for German corporations — an engineer for Audi for example. They opened up an account with us and then introduced them to their family and friends.”