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March 23, 2022

Upvest receives all BaFin licenses for securities and crypto brokerage and custody

Upvest receives five additional BaFin licenses and empowers its B2B clients to provide their end-customers with seamless, reliable and secure access to the capital markets. B2B clients, especially those without own financial services licenses, will benefit via Upvest's Investment-API from the full range of investment services, from ETFs and stocks to crypto assets and brokerage services.

Martin Kassing
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CEO & Co-Founder

Upvest, the Berlin based infrastructure fintech, becomes a security trading institut through five licenses provided by the German supervisory authority BaFin. This makes the company one of the few financial institutions in Europe that can offer its B2B clients securities and crypto alike. Upvest, with its expertise in the fields of capital markets, information technology and process security, qualified for this new status after an extensive and detailed application process with the German supervisory authorities.

With Upvest’s Investment-API, B2B clients are now no longer forced to develop their own brokerage and custody infrastructure. Now any company which wants to offer investment products has access to endless growth possibilities due to a variety of use cases, assets and countries. The Investment-API and new core banking system streamline the whole process, letting Upvest's B2B clients focus on their core business and end-customer experience.

As a software company with a banking license, we can be very flexible: Some clients use our technology to enable scalable and affordable investment brokerage and custody. Others use our technology and regulatory licenses at the same time. Upvest provides a broad spectrum of technological and regulatory building blocks that fit nicely into the existing infrastructure for small and very large fintechs alike.

Negative interest rates, rising inflation and an emerging pension gap are contributing to the growing demand for attractive financial products such as ETFs, stocks as well as crypto assets. In 2021, the total volume invested in ETFs increased by EUR 50 billion - a year-to-year growth of 50 percent. Upvest aims to facilitate this trend by empowering even more companies to offer attractive investments to their customers through its Investment-API.

Designed as a plug-and-play solution, Upvest's Investment-API can be easily connected to existing backends and can be immediately deployed,​​ enabling businesses to build great investment experiences for their end users – seamless, secure and across international borders. The long-term goal of Upvest is to become the technological backbone for all B2B companies that want to provide their end-customers with secure access to the capital markets and crypto assets. “In terms of the total investment volume invested by retail investors, the US-market is still significantly ahead of those in Germany and Europe. That is exactly what we want to change by ultimately enabling even more retail investors to benefit from the opportunities of the capital market”, adds Martin Kassing.