Every company subsidises somehow their āfreeā offering so nothing is trully free but itās irrelevant in my point. My point is interbank FX, no meaningful spread, not even 25bps.
Indeed they use Currency Cloud but, from a user point of view, what difference does it make? Likewise, why could not Freetrade do the same?
And, itās just a matter of time before Revolut to take this in-house the same way as their banking licence application and them ditching their supplier āGlobal Processing Servicesā to bring also internalise payment processing.
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Valid point, but I guess matching is not always a solution for all. It does come down to the sustainability of the service provision. Freetradeās vision is not about catching the users in short-term, offering āeverythingā for free and then introducing price increases post factum. And the Revolutās offer is also not clear at the moment, hence inappropriate to compare just as yet. Granted, Revolut is a fintech behemoth and has grown exponentially in the past years, but I personally would do not have that trust as I have in Freetrade.
To give another comparison, Monzoās user retention in the UK is about 30 to 40 per cent better than Revolutās (based on weekly active users reports), and that is given the latter has more customers (although I could be a bit outdated on that fact). Having 2,000,000 users and a potential to secure 3,000,000 by the end of the year is not a representation of an utterly successful business, it should all be about happy customer retention and ability to achieve better profit margins. As it stands, Revolut is not quite there yet.
But it would most certainly be interesting to compare Revolut to Freetrade once the former comes up with a ready-to-ship product.
Also, thinking of 25bps you mentioned, I want to insert one of my favourite posts on this entire forum (guilty of quoting it too often 
):
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Worth noting that Revolut charge the same 0.5% FX charge on total transactions above a certain amount in a month. I believe Transferwise also offered this rate, but have lowered it to 0.35% now. 0.5% above interbank is highly competitive!
Freetrade and Revolut will build different products and have different business models (as Monzo & Revolut have). They will all do well IMO as they offer superior products and pricing than the incumbentsā¦ and are cool!! 
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Revolut donāt charge premium users 0.5% above any amount, itās still free for them no matter the volume. Anyone doing serious investing/trading with Revolut will be premium users paying zero FX transaction charges on unlimited transaction amounts. The premium yearly fee is peanuts compared with the savings. Thatās the Freemium principle.
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Seems like multi currency accounts was raised but most of above discussion seems like on FX rates commission(0.5% or now I guess 0.45%).
Just for understanding purpose, Is freetrade considering multi currency account(effectively GBP, USD Cash) in long term(may be lower in priority now) or there are commercial implications which doesnāt work with freetrade model and is not planning to offer this service?
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I believe an issue is that you can only have ISAās in pounds. Itās still a good idea, but it does limit the benefit somewhat as the majority of money will be in ISAāsā¦
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This will become more important when people will use freetrade for SIPP as amounts will be significant and so is impact.
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A post was merged into an existing topic: SIPP - Private Pensions
It would be useful to hold our account payments in multiple currencies so that I do not have to worry about getting screwed over with the FX rate, and transfer it over to my native currency when I want to, at the rate I want to.
Be it through you guys or a third party.
Does Freetrade make money from current FX charges? If so, it seems like a bit of a hidden cost.
EDIT: FX Charge - Spot rate + 0.45%.
Would be amazing if we can convert when we want to / makes sense to rather than losing out on small amounts with each foreign transaction.
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So hidden they have a page dedicated to explaining it:
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I think we can all appreciate and do without smart ass comments like these when discussing topics.
It is entirely possible for people not to know everything or have all pieces of knowledge in mind at once and so it does not immediately occur to me to go to an external source and find their facts.
Thank you for redirecting me to the prices page.
The focus of the ideas is to help improve the app and from a userās perspective if it is not labeled or costs arenāt explained directly from the app from a particular transaction it seems like a missing UX flow or opportunity to make the users journey a little easier.
I know from the robo advisor a user can pull information. It would be great if it was present on our contracts via a small information icon / context menu
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Fair enough. Itās a forum with a search function though, so take a few seconds to search for the answer rather then make an accusatory post, however well intended.
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Apologies, Its not accusatory, and it was not of that intention. It is a perfectly valid point from a userās perspective.
The idea isnāt for me to find answers for myself in particular, it is to think about ways which will help answer possible questions future users might have.
If it is not immediately obvious as to what the charges are without having to dig a little deeper away from the source of the subject then it can be considered as an anti-pattern.
I could be wrong, I havenāt dug around the whole app but the experience which prompted this question put me in a situation where I had to ask, and so I am sure when the mass market is reached there will be more people asking the same question, as with anything, however obvious it may seem.
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Iāll admit Iād be happy to see it upfront in the app, would resolve any queries.
Real transparency from Freetrade might show āour feeā as part of the trade with a link to the pricing page perhaps.
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Thereās a few threads about this already. Iām fairly sure itās on their to-do list, because I donāt see how they can launch across Europe without it.
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āCurrencycloud today announces the launch of Currencycloud Spark, a solution enabling banks and Fintechs to provide multi-currency accounts to their business customers to collect, store, convert and pay in more than 35 currencies. Currencycloud Spark will enable businesses to realise their global ambitions faster than they ever dared dream.ā
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Multi-currency accounts would have prevented what has just happened with Barclays/Currency Cloud.
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If stock price remains the same over a month, and I want to get out, then I can be down because of exchange rates. Itās not day trading that is only affected.
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Feature Request
Provide USD pots instead of automatically exchanging USD into GBP.
Situation and the Problem
Sale of US shares, and US dividend payments are immediately converted from USD into GBP.
i) no decision making on when currency is exchanged
ii) Re-investing with USD divs/share sales hits us with another FX fee, and an exchange rate hit.
iii) cannot withdraw USD into nominated bank account.
Proposal
Provide us with two pots: one where we get charged an FX fee to do GBP to USD (we already have this), and another that receives USD when we sell or receive dividends.
To convert from a USD pot back to GBP we can pay the FX fee.
When we buy shares, it uses currency from the non-sell USD pot for free if funds are available, and any extra it can take from the sell pot has an FX fee charged. We could withdraw USD directly from Freetrade into our nominated USD currency account*
This way Freetrade still earn some money for supporting foreign trades, but clients can also avoid exchanging an unfavourable rates, and actually use their bucks.
Summary
Currency FX fees are reasonable, but right now we have no control over these. Even less control when receiving dividends.
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