Digital financial services can help modernise the European economy across sectors and turn Europe into a global digital player, as per the European Commission. By making rules more digital-friendly and safe for consumers, the European Commission wants to leverage synergies between high innovative startups and established firms in the financial sector while addressing associated risks.
Based on broad public consultations and Digital finance outreach, the European Commission has adopted a digital finance strategy. The strategy has four main priorities; removing fragmentation in the digital single market, adapting the EU regulatory framework to facilitate digital innovation, promoting data-driven finance & addressing the challenges & risks with digital transformation, and lastly enhancing the digital operational resilience of the financial system.
With this thought, Bitpanda, a digital investment platform that wants to remove complicated financial barriers, has raised Europe’s largest Series A funding of $52M (approx. €44M) led by Valar Ventures – a venture capital firm backed by Peter Thiel. Speedinvest also participated in this round.
Recruitment spending
Eric Demuth, co-founder, and CEO of Bitpanda says, “Our goal is to become the leading investment and trading platform in Europe, not only for the people who are already familiar with trading but for everyone. This funding will help us do just that and, crucially, continue to recruit some of the world’s leading talent to our team.”
According to the company, this round is the largest European Series A funding round in 2020.
This year, Bitpanda already expanded to France, Spain, and Turkey. The company now plans to expand in additional European markets by 2021, as it looks to offer its users access to stock markets.
The funds will also help Bitpanda to recruit 70 new employees, bringing the total number of staff to 300 by the end of 2020. As part of the investment, Valar Ventures Founding Partner, Andrew McCormack, will also join Bitpanda’s board.
A bit about Bitpanda
The Vienna-based Bitpanda was founded in 2014 by Eric Demuth, Paul Klanschek, and Christian Trummer. The platform removes complicated financial barriers by harnessing the innovative power of digitised assets and blockchain technology. It also offers low fees, 24/7 trading, and real-time settlements.
In simple terms, the platform wants to make it easier for everyone to start investing and to take ownership of their financial future.
According to the company, it is doubling its revenue annually with over 1.3 million users.
Through its website and mobile apps, users have access to 44 investment assets.
Earlier this year, the company launched payments and savings platforms and now looks to build more innovative ways of trading and investing, to ensure digital investing and trading of all asset classes is made available to everyone in Europe.
Recently, the company also announced that VeChain’s native token, VET, will also be available on its platform for crypto enthusiasts to buy, sell or swap VeChain on its platform.
Image credit: BitPanda
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