Coindrum, the invention of 27-year-old entrepreneur Lukas Decker (pictured) has had one of its units installed at Milan Malpensa airport at the entrance of the new flagship store in Terminal 1.
Passengers use Coindrum to deposit all their unwanted coins and in return receive 110% of their value as an airport shopping voucher.
Coindrum has reached a supply agreement with airport retailer Dufry, which operates 2,200 shops in 63 countries. Andrés Holzer, vice chairman of Dufry stated: “Dufry’s size means that any solution that drives better commercial results and is scalable is of interest. Coindrum definitely falls into that category.
“Coins were neglected in the past due to their comparatively low value, it took the Coindrum innovation to demonstrate that they can be used as a psychological trigger to outspend their value at the tills.”
Coindrum was tested successfully by Aer Rianta at Dublin Airport and is now scaling up. Coindrum Ltd raised €1,8750,000 in equity funding from ten investors in December 2015.
In Association with
Investors in the latest round included Declan Ryan (€330,000), Tom Kennedy of Hostelworld (€250,000), Bobby Healy of CarTrawler (€150,000), international investor and entrepreneur Nicole Junkermann, as well as Patrick Joy of Suretank (€100,000). Ryan's Irlandia Investments had previously invested €200,000 in Decker's venture.
MBA Student
Decker, a German national, came to Ireland to undertake an MBA at Smurfit Business School. Frank Roche, one of Decker’s lecturers, encouraged Decker to plough ahead with his idea and is a director of the venture, which was incorporated in September 2012 while Decker was still studying.
Coindrum works by scanning coins for their weight, size and metal content. This process is fairly straightforward when all the coins are euro coins, for example, and more complicated if the coins are a mix of multiple currencies.
Decker credits charter investor Declan Ryan for enabling the prototype to come to fruition. Besides proving seed funding, the son of Ryanair founder Tony Ryan also provided Decker with office space for his startup. The Coindrum machines are manufactured for Decker in Sweden.
