Swiss crowdlending platform Swisspeers and foreign exchange marketplace Amnis have announced a new partnership to offer small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Switzerland new financing and repayment options.
In particular, Swisspeers now offers SMEs the option to choose the currency in which they want the credit to be paid out: Swiss francs or euros. As of the third quarter of 2017, SMEs will also be able to choose whether they want to repay their loans in CHF or EUR. Investors, on the other hand, will solely invest in CHF and repaid in CHF as well, implying that they won’t be subject to currency risk.
Swisspeers is an independent online platform that lets SMEs raise loans financed directly by investors, eliminating the need to rely on a financial institution. Swisspeers also offers complementary services that support SMEs in fulfilling the documentation requirements for credit requests.
For investors, the platform offers the opportunity to invest directly in Swiss SMEs and get an attractive risk/return profile.
Meanwhile, Amnis will be responsible for the management of foreign exchange transactions in the spot market and forward market. The company will provide an interface to efficiently handle EUR transactions for Swisspeers customers.
Amnis is a foreign exchange marketplace that allows SMEs to exchange currencies at the best rates. The company recently launched a cloud solution, tresio.ch, that simplifies the handling of SME finance.
The partnership emerged following several discussions with SMEs. Swisspeers and Amnis found that in most cases, currency fluctuations were existential issues for SMEs. In a media release, the companies cited the case of a business that needs to pay invoices in EUR on a specific date, as well as the case of a SME with incomes in EUR that are offset by wage and other payments in Swiss francs.
“SMEs have repeatedly raised the challenge of currency fluctuations between Swiss francs and euros,” said Alwin Meyer, co-founder of Swisspeers.
“With the solution, which was launched together with Amnis, we are able to efficiently meet the need for currency fluctuations, even for smaller sums, and thus help to increase the planning security for SMEs with euro exposure.”
Michael Wüst, founding partner of Amnis, said that the collaboration with Swisspeers will provide SMEs with “an efficient and simple solution” for obtaining or repaying loans in the currency appropriate to their business model.
“The combination of complete automation and netting effects between our SME customers allows us to offer very low margins through our platform,” Wüst indicated.
Featured image: Bank notes via Pixabay.
