Direct Debit to ISA account

I would like to suggest using direct debit for payment of the ISA account fee. Simple, practical and safe.

FT could offer DD as a payment option. What do you guys think?

Auto-invest would be the end-game (HL call it regular saving). What benefit does DD have over manually setting up a standing order?

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It could also be a standing order payment. I just gave a suggestion. Any idea is welcome mate.

His point is you could setup a standing order right now via your bank which in effect does the same already as what you are requesting via direct debit. Give it a try and see what you think :blush:

I understand, but at the moment the FT only accepts the debit card details. Therefore, I am suggesting an alternative commonly used even gyms. It could also be standing order.

I think paying for the ISA fee by direct debit is a good idea but I don’t think it’s viable for Freetrade’s business model because of the fees.
I’ve only done a cursory amount of research so take this with a grain of salt.

Debit card processing fees seem to be less than 0.5%.
For direct debit processing the cheapest I could find is 1% plus £0.20. On the £3 ISA fee that works out to 7.7%.

Based on these figures, direct debit would cost Freetrade 15 times the cost of debit card processing.

If anyone knows better, please provide a correction. I’d love Direct Debit to be a viable option.

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So maybe standing order would be better.

Direct Debit is expensive (in comparison) for collection of money, but there are advantages. People also forget that many businesses especially those in payments, will also pay for each faster payment or BACS received inbound, so there is a cost to this too.

I’d love to see top-up by faster payments so we can setup a SO, especially as I see my investment strategy as long term and regular, ignoring the highs and lows and just be constant.

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Any update on offering direct debit as a payment option for the ISA monthly fee?

I wouldn’t mind paying either by direct debit or credit card (or credit card via PayPal), as I pay other bills using these methods, but Freetrade is the only monthly bill I have to pay by debit card, which means I have to specially budget for it. (I actually pay for nothing using a debit card.)

If you are going to be supporting direct debit for payments into one’s investment accounts, will you also be supporting it for payment of the monthly fee?

If not, why is it that many other companies that I pay monthly subscriptions to for small amounts can take direct debit or credit card payments, but Freetrade is still only accepting debit cards?