Hi Jim
Firstly, the price you see in-app is the latest mid-price received from third-party data feeds (which is the price half way between bid and offer in the market)
We then take your order and seek quotes from market makers on the LSE’s RSP network. However, we only execute if the best quote provided is at least as good as the observable bid/offer on the LSE order book (known as ‘LSE touch price’), in order to try to protect our customers against getting bad prices.
Other brokers have different methodologies. Some will take the other side of your trade. This is not something we do because we think it introduces a conflict of interest with getting the best outcome for our customers.
There is also the issue of market volatility right now - here’s a recent post where we go into more detail on how it can affect orders.
In terms of having more control on pricing, limit orders is a feature we’ll introduce which would allow you to do that.
Hope this helps explain in a bit more detail about our approach, and why we do it this way.