Freetrade Competitors

Yep, Freetrade dodged a (potential) bullet here :smiley:

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The surge in ‘buy now pay later’ – and why we should be worried | Fintech | The Guardian

I’ve managed to sign-up after a small issue with the on-boarding process, which required an update to the app.

The account shows options for holding £, $ and €, but looks like only a selection of US stocks currently available (no ETF’s or Funds). This is a GIA account, no ISA or SIPP etc yet.

Will try out the buying process on Monday, but at the moment I think it’s very much the MVP version of the app. It has a clean interface and includes basic info for the stocks (Market Cap & P/E ratio).

Nothing for Freetrade to worry about right now, but no doubt Lightyear will move fast to improve the app and stock universe. Hopefully Freetrade can make the most of their early move advantage whilst the new competition plays catchup.

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Some screen dumps for those interested… Once depositing money, you have to convert it to usd to buy usd shares. You can buy monetary value, or a number of shares.
I don’t like the UI. It’s clunky.





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I’ve been using the Lightyear app for a few days now and I think it’s a decent investment platform given its early days for them. They need to increase the available share universe of course.

The interface is a little different from most of the other investment apps but I’m used to it now and it’s ok for me.

They are only charging customers an fx fee who convert currency of more than £3000 per month - then the charge is 0.35%.

That seems like a too generous limit, as I can’t imagine there are a lot of people with more than £3000 a month to invest.

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Is there quit a lot of tickers or is there only a small amount of companies currently?

Only a small amount of companies at the moment

Lightyear planning an EU launch in the first half of next year.

I’m still hopeful Freetrade can beat them to it!

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Got the opportunity to download Lightyear today. For some reason part of the onboarding is to provide your employers name and address which set alarm bells ringing for me. I’ll give it a miss.

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I joined as well today. Why that scare you off?

It’s collecting irrelevant information. Kinda ‘illegal’ under GDPR :thinking:

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I agree with you there. But all that and more of your info is probably already compromised from social media apps anyway.

Sure thing. But by that logic Freetrade can ask you to upload semi naked pictures in the sign-up process because you have them on Facebook or insta anyway :smiley:

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Because I have no idea :

a) why they need your employment info and
b) what they’re going to do with it

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  • What their data security is like
  • What data privacy is like in Estonia
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Law in Estonia - DLA Piper Global Data Protection Laws of the World.

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“Trade Republic is available in Spain AND we’re opening our waiting lists in Italy and the Netherlands”

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It’s great that they can be so definitive about offering the product in January onwards. They must have permission from the EU regulatory authority either directly or after going through the process quickly. I wonder if Freetrade could have applied through another country other than Sweden and gained EU permission a lot quicker. Who knows as you get told nothing anymore,anyway I’m sure it will be “SOON” :joy::joy::joy::joy:
I love you all :pray::pray::kissing_heart::kissing_heart:

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