Indiegogo has pitched itself as a global crowdfunding platform, one of its advantages over Kickstarter, which just made its first international leap to the U.K. in October. But now that Kickstarter is looking beyond the U.S., Indiegogo is building up its global footprint by supporting more currencies, languages and offering more localized websites.
Now, in addition to U.S. dollars, users can pledge support for projects using Euros, Pounds and Canadian dollars. Starting this month, Indiegogo will also offer full customer language support for French and German in addition to English. And starting early next year, Indiegogo will begin rolling out localized websites for British, German, French and Canadian users. Indiegogo is also looking at establishing a subsidiary in the U.K. in the first half of next year.
The better local support means French supporters, for example, will see campaigns that highlight local projects first. And campaign owners will now be able to create campaigns that run in multiple languages.
Previously, Indiegogo allowed people to start campaigns from 196 countries. But the service was still skewed toward U.S. users, who generate 70 percent of the activity. Indiegogo in August partnered with Google and Stiftung Entrepreneurship to create a startup competition in Germany, which was the first real localized effort from Indiegogo. Now, it’s looking to expand on its global promise by letting more people use the crowdfunding platform.
The move highlights again how big the opportunity is in crowdfunding. Indiegogo said it’s already helped launch more than 100,000 campaigns worldwide without much localization efforts. Kickstarter, meanwhile, said it got $ 3.3 million in pledges in its first month operating in the U.K.
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