Crowdfunding soars in Switzerland

Money raised through crowdfunding rose from 28 million Swiss francs (CHF) or €25.7 million euros to CHF 128 million (€117.5m) in Switzerland last year: a rise of 362 per cent.

Based on this growth, the market could reach transaction volumes as high as CHF 400 million in 2017, according to Crowdfunding Monitoring Switzerland: the 4^th edition of the annual market report on Swiss crowdfunding platforms, published by the School for Applied Sciences Lucerne.

However, according to the report the steepest increases were seen in the for-profit categories of crowdfunding with online giving still estimated to represent just two per cent of donations to traditional charities in Switzerland.

The biggest rise (+597%) came in the crowdlending segment, which reached CHF 55.1 million, followed by crowdinvesting (+453%) at CHF 39.2 million and invoice trading (CHF 17 million).

Reward-based crowdfunding segments saw similar rises to 2015, up by approximately CHF 4 million with CHF 17 million raised for projects overall in 2016. The largest volumes went to projects in the technology and start-up (CHF 5 million), sport and health (CHF 2.6 million), and music and concerts (CHF 1.9 million) categories. 230 social, environmental and educational campaigns raised about CHF 2.5 million, with an average of CHF 11,000 per campaign.

Switzerland currently has 14 crowdfunding platforms. Swisscom’s Letshelp.ch started in summer 2016 and is the only platform exclusively for NGO use with the supervising authority ZEWO’s label of quality.

The Crowdfunding Monitoring Switzerland report is published on an annual basis with raw data supplied by crowdfunding platforms in Switzerland.