Peaks has raised €5 million in growth capital from Haerlem Capital & Rithmeester as the investor took a stake previously owned by Rabobank Frontier Ventures.
The Dutch digital investment platform was launched in 2017 as a platform for first-time investors and millennials with the aim of attracting their spare change onto the platform.
The business model seems to have picked up as the trading platform is now supporting more than 130,000 active users in the Netherlands and Germany.
Tom Arends, Chief Executive Officer of Peaks, commented: “We see that the simplicity and convenience of the app, as well as the strong results it achieves, appeal to a much wider target group than just beginner investors. It’s also resonating among consumers with more wealth and more investment experience.”
“With this new injection of capital, we want to keep growing our customer base in the Netherlands and Germany and expand our services to make investing even more accessible to a broader group of consumers. In the near future, for example, we want to enable our users to build their own portfolio to match their own personal preferences, so they have even more control over their investments.”
Albert Theunissen of Rithmeester, said: “Peaks makes professional investing and wealth accumulation accessible to all consumers by offering them a simple, cost-effective, transparent, top-quality product. This is how Peaks is democratising investing. And that’s why Peaks has been such a success among its users in the Netherlands and Germany. We want to work with Peaks to expand their investment proposition and make it accessible to users all over Europe.”
Peaks might be the first mobile app in Europe to make use of consumers’ spare change for investments: rounding up the amount spent on debit and credit cards to the next euro and investing the difference in user portfolios.
Peaks was founded in 2016 by Tom Arends, Rutger Beens, and Sijbrand Tieleman. It is licensed and supervised by the Dutch Authority for Financial Markets (AFM).
Peaks has its roots in the Old Dutch ‘piekenpijp’ – an old-fashioned coin tube for spare change which made saving money easy. Slowly but surely the tube would fill up with more money, ready to be raided for a rainy day or a nice treat.
As with the original coin tube, Peaks makes it easy to set aside your spare change. By transferring it directly from your bank account to an investment account, where it can build up interest.
