Changes to crediting your account/s

Ideas đź’ˇ
1

Today (Aug 31, 2020) has demonstrated something with the FT systems that I didn’t know about that is really, the worst.

Speed of credit to your account.

Aug 31 is a bank holiday in the UK, and usefully even though you transfer money into a Lloyds bank account some manual interaction is required on the part of FT and a third party and unhelpfully even though the global markets are open, the third party and FT are, not.

That, sucks!

Magnified by the fact that, Aug 31, 2020 is stock split for AAPL and TSLA today.

So, if you didn’t credit your account early - like me (if I’d have known, I would have) you are, screwed. As the US market opens, but you can’t add any more money to your account until Tuesday!
Imagine, a business running that actually prevents it’s own patronage. Literally losing money because I can’t trade.

This, needs to change.

First. Please ensure your third party and whatever manual interaction is required work regardless of bank holidays because the markets don’t stop for UK bank hols.

Second. Please provide better and more instant crediting to our accounts. Increase the Google Pay limit, or provide the (in progress) debit card credit asap.

I found this, VERY annoying today, to the point where, I considered leaving the platform for a moment.

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You’re in luck! Read the post on open banking, its happening just like you’ve asked for, unfortunately its rolling out at the moment so possibly not on your app yet.

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Cool news @AdamL - I assume you mean this thread?

If yes, I have some interesting questions which are open for others to answer.

  1. I have an android phone running Android 10 off the kernel version from Jul 16, 2020. And the play store says my app is “up to date” but I don’t have this feature. Seems to me a roll-out must be broken down by version then, if it’s not available to all, which begs the question, why a latest version Android hasn’t seen that update :confused:

  2. If I understood correctly the previous conversation I had in a chat on this, there is a manual intervention to get your money from the FT Lloyds bank account (that you transfer into) into your trading account on FT.
    As far as I can tell, that process/requirement still exists (per the numerous people talking about the 2-4hr waiting time for a transfer - which let’s be honest, in trading, is about 2-4hrs too long). As such, unless I’m missing something, the open banking feature may make the process to get money into the FT Lloyds account easier (i.e. you don’t have to do a bank transfer anymore) but… still isn’t an instant credit and in the circumstance described above that I was/am in today, with the bank hol, still wouldn’t have solved that.

Happy to be enlightened.

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Agreed, this isn’t good enough.

I also topped up via a bank transfer a few hours before the US market opened, to then later remember it won’t happen because of the holiday here in the U.K.

Hopefully it’ll be rectified soon enough.

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5

Yep I agree, I’m sure it should be able to be automated since we put reference codes in. It would’ve been normal 5 years ago but I think instant topups is expected now.

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Perhaps I’m missing something but if you have planned to buy a particular stock then why would you not have your account properly funded in advance of your buy?

Is this just an instant gratification thing that people expect these days? I’d hope people aren’t buying stocks on a last second whim? We all knew it was a bank holiday.

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7

Perhaps I’m missing something but if you have planned to buy a particular stock then why would you not have your account properly funded in advance of your buy?

Is this just an instant gratification thing that people expect these days? I’d hope people aren’t buying stocks on a last second whim? We all knew it was a bank holiday.

Interesting tone, but good question.

First thing I would say is, as we live in “these days” and not “the old days” one might argue that what is generally expected would be the most sensible way to run your business.
As such, if “instant gratification” (I’m not entirely how that works in anything but day trading, but ok) is required, then it should be the business model to provide it.

Further. While we may all have known it was a bank holiday, what I suspect we didn’t all know is that the people who credit our accounts were taking the day off too even though the markets, are open.

And what some may also not have known is, that a human needs to be involved in a data transfer of money, given that the transfer of money between our accounts and FTs Lloyds bank account is immediate per FAST payments.

So, for those of us that don’t think we need to credit our account 17 days in advance of a buy because some of us are long term investors and as such didn’t need to check the precise buy and sell price on Fri close - and maybe tried to credit our account over the weekend, or this morning given the nice window in time we have before the US markets open - perhaps we have a right to be surprised that on this day of all days (when two big name companies did a stock split) that FT didn’t think to, oh I dunno, pay some overtime perhaps? :confused:

Additionally, as not everyone is always aware of the particulars of every app when they open an account on it, perhaps we should also fairly say, when on other apps the world over, credits are immediate, that it would be a surprise to any customer not well versed in the payments process of Freetrade, that an app that launched in 2018 might oh, I dunno, not seemingly require a lady with a stamp to authorise our account credits!

This is all the more annoying when the GooglePay feature is immediate, yet we can only use it once, evidently because there may be an additional charge to FT.
So, a form of the functionality tediously is there, but we can’t get to it more than once!

True, perhaps it’s just me… but I suspect, it isn’t.

This system needs changing, and I suspect everyone (bar the outliers who still request a chequebook from their bank) knows that.

Appreciate the comment tho - good to keep the post to the top of the page :smiley:

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8

Re-reading it, its a bit aggressive ? I don’t mean it to be.

The general condition these days of people expecting instant results even when its not needed (i believe its actually potentially harmful to your mental health, e.g. those instant hits of gratification, money in the bank, transaction complete, thing bought, at your door the same day, isnt necessarily good for you, but id need to double check)

I agree with your general concern and about the condition of payments in general. We should be able to send funds to an account and have them appear basically instantly or the opposite, not whatever the current mess it (it is i feel a bit of a mess)

While i think their payment system needs a lot of work, its doesn’t need to change, in terms of functionality if your attempting to fund your account to buy a stock now then something has already gone wrong on your part.

Id even argue that not allowing instant transfers of money is a good thing when it comes to stopping impulse buys, and potentially the more morally correct way to run freetrade.

My point being that if you were planning to buy a stock then you should have already had the money set aside for it some time ago, and should have been able to fund your account much earlier in the process, not over a weekend.

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I appreciate re-evaluation.

So, in the spirit of reset.

I hear your points on immediacy with regards to it being dangerous not to think about things.
However for me, I don’t think there’s a correlation between transferring money and thinking about a trade.

For example, I could think about something for months, but prefer to leave my money in a savings account, or somewhere getting me interest (the little there is with interest rates atm) until I’m ready to buy, then move it into my FT account. That money is still put aside, it’s just not put aside in my FT cash account.

So I don’t think it’s completely accurate to assume that people who haven’t loaded up their FT account which is earning them nothing while the money is in there, are people that haven’t paid attention before they trade.

It’s up to me if I choose to do that the day before I trade, or even the same day. And the functionality should exist if I want to.
If they want to add some silly [Yes] disclaimer to say “have you thought about any imminent trade”, cool, I’m with that.

I get the logic of your position, certainly, but I don’t believe it’s entirely relevant to the case of instant crediting of our FT accounts.

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I received an in-app notification, “Update: UK market opening hours” on 26th August, which clearly stated that the UK markets would be closed and that bank transfers would not be processed by Freetrade on 31st Aug, so I topped up my account before then.

I can’t be the only one who got this reminder?

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I didn’t get any notification but more importantly, a notification is immaterial surely?

What if you don’t have access to the money you want to trade until a later point?
What if you aren’t on your phone every minute of the day?
What if you’re out of signal?

For me, the functionality is the problem. Notifying someone of the bad functionality doesn’t eliminate this.

Especially when;
a) in 2020 there should be no need for manual intervention with money transfers,
b) GooglePay limits are a way around this, and
b) if there is a need for a person to press a button to approve some money, then those people should be available at all times the market is open, or there is a disconnect between the service, and the usability.

You wouldn’t open a restaurant, with opening hours of 0830 to 1630, but the chef is only available from 1000-1400 and then blame the customers for not coming at the right time, or not reading the sign detailing the chefs hours. YOU should be providing the service, when you are open, and when the customers want it.