Back in October crowdfunding site Kickstarter made an international move by launching in the UK and allowing people to enter payment info directly on Kickstarter in pounds sterling, rather than via Amazon Payments. They also hinted at other countries for expansion. However, Indiegogo, the large, more general crowdfunding platform is going one better by launching in the UK, Germany, France, and Canada simultaneously.
In addition to U.S. dollars, transactions will now be available in euros, pounds sterling and Canadian dollars. The site will also be ported to the French and German languages this month. There will also be localized versions of the homepage and search and discovery experiences for British, French, German, and Canadian users “in early 2013.”
Speaking at LeWeb in Paris, co-founder Danae Ringelmann says “broadening our international offerings is a priority” and is based on traction they have seen internationally. Right now anyone anywhere can list a crowd-funded campaign, but until now they could only do it in dollars.
In August, Indiegogo announced a partnership with Google and Stiftung Entrepreneurship to kick-start the crowdfunding of Germany-based startups via the Gründer-Garage initiative, an online competition for German-speaking entrepreneurs.
The competition has so far garnered 177 small business and entrepreneurial campaigns, raising more than €320,000 with Google’s €10,000 in matching funds. This was Indiegogo’s first focused international endeavor that rolled out de.indiegogo.com, a localized version of www.indiegogo.com in German.