Bux, an Amsterdam, The Netherlands-based fintech startup, raised €10.6m in Series C funding.
The round was led by HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, with participation from Velocity Capital and a number of influential angel investors, including former Booking.com CMO Arthur Kosten and Thierry Schaap, co-founder of online brokerage firm BinckBank.
The company, which also opened the pre-registration of its inaugural crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs, giving over one million BUX users the opportunity to own shares in the business, intends to use the funds to undertake product expansion to be able to create a full suite of apps by 2020, ranging from short term trading, to long-term investing.
Led by Nick Bortot, CEO and founder, Bux provides an international community-based trading app, primarily aimed at those with no experience with trading, which has already been rolled out across eight European countries, with over 200,000 users from the UK alone.
The company has partnered with British-German broker ayondo Markets Ltd, who is licensed by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Consequently, users can trade with real money which is subject to the FCA regulations and their funds are covered by the UK’s Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
Bux has introduced a number of rules to ensure users don’t take irresponsible risks. These mitigations include:
– Diversification: BUXsters cannot invest the entire value of their account in one stock – they have to spread their risk
– Risk management: BUXsters cannot lose more than the amount invested
– Experience: All new BUXsters have to start with funBUX – a virtual currency
– Limited leverage: Does not offer ridiculously high leverages
– Transparency: BUX always clearly discloses transaction costs and they don’t make money off the spread as there are no bid and ask prices; everyone trades on one price.
FinSMEs
24/10/2017