Crowdfunding Platforms Boom in Switzerland

by
Swissinfo
My articles My siteAbout meMy videosMy books
Follow on:TwitterFacebookGoogle +

This crowd backed a winner: Bernese football fans gather outside parliament on May 20 after their team, Young Boys, won the Swiss league (Keystone)

Swiss crowdfunding platforms dealt with CHF375 million ($377 million) in 2017, almost three times as much as the previous year. Some 160,000 people supported a crowdfunding project.

Over the past eight years, more than half a billion francs have been collected via the “swarm-based form of financing”, said the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts on Monday.

Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the internet.

The main driver of growth in recent years has been the crowdfunded financing of small and medium-sized businesses and investments in property, according to the university.

The report’s authors expect crowdfunding in Switzerland to break the billion-franc mark by the end of the year.

At the end of April, 43 crowdfunding platforms had a physical presence in Switzerland. Many other internationally focused platforms were not registered in Switzerland.

About Swissinfo

SWI swissinfo.ch – the international service of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Since 1999, swissinfo.ch has fulfilled the federal government’s mandate to distribute information about Switzerland internationally, supplementing the online offerings of the radio and television stations of the SBC. Today, the international service is directed above all at an international audience interested in Switzerland, as well as at Swiss citizens living abroad.

My articlesMy siteAbout meMy books
Follow on:TwitterFacebookGoogle +