Bitpanda, launched in Austria but now serving a broader European market, has set up a holding company in Switzerland, according to a report.
Bitpanda provides both a labeled and white-labeled Fintech as a service platform offering crypto trading, payments as well as traditional investments. Bitpanda GmbH is a registered digital assets service provider with the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) and approved by the French Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) under PACTE law. Bitpanda Payments GmbH also holds a PSD2 license. Last November, Bitpanda received a licence from the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, or BaFin, to provide custody and proprietary trading of crypto assets.
A recent report in DerStandard indicates that Bitpanda has gone through a bit of restructuring – ostensibly to gain access to the capital markets.
According to the report, Bitpanda Group AG in Zurich is now the holding company of all Bitpanda operations.
The founders remain the same, along with outside investors including Valar funds (Peter Thiel) and Gemini Investments (Winklevoss brothers).
The article states:
“The holding structure makes administrative organization easier, especially for international investors, investing in a holding company is easier to handle than in a GmbH. The stock corporation is at home in Switzerland because more Fintechs are based there than in Austria, which has made the challenge here correspondingly great.”
Bitpanda is said to gain better access to long term capital markets by having a Swiss holding company.
In 2021, Bitpanda raised several hundred million dollars at a $4.1 billion valuation. The company claims to be one of the fastest-growing Fintechs in Europe, with around 4 million users.
