Freetrade is Out 🔥 Share your first thoughts once you get access!

[Lkinsman]

Most of my thoughts will mirror the vast majority of comments here, but I’ll contribute anyway!

Onboarding was very straightforward, intuitive and fast. The live chat is super helpful and don’t mind the odd stupid question To re-iterate what others have said (sorry), funding the account is definitely not as fluid as it could be but I suspect this will change in future releases. Direct debits would be desirable.

App Experience

Overall experience and design is slick.

I like the inclusion of company logos beside the stock name for easier recognition.

It would be nice to be able to swipe between the various tabs.

I’ve seen some comments about touch ID being inconsistent, however on my iPhone 6s (the best iPhone, no debate ) I only get asked for the passcode if I deliberately use a finger not registered with biometrics. No other time has the app reverted to passcode (yet).

When actually buying a share in a company, it wasn’t immediately obvious I needed to enter more than the share price, and sometimes it felt like I would have to enter an arbitrary amount to allow me to review the order: eg BP for £5.64, wouldn’t let me review until I entered something like £7. Would be much easier if I could say I wanted to buy £x worth of shares and then add other fees at the end.

Instant trades: worked flawlessly for me - no problems.

Basic trades: one worked, one failed. I assume it failed because the price increased (by a few pence!), but it would be nice to have an explanation why. Perhaps a notification alert when the price increases or a reminder notification 15-30 mins prior to 4pm that the trade is about to be processed could be useful.

Overall, I am really happy with the initial release, I hope this doesn’t come across as too negative!

An idea for later down the line - Would it be worth having a demo/tutorial mode to outline how the app works, where everything is and how to execute a trade? Something close to @saf ’s video above.Could be very useful to new investors.

[Chris]

You’ll be pleased to know that a lot of your requests are already being asked for. Browse the features and ideas category and spend your 20 votes. Especially on IFTTT integration.

[Lkinsman]

Just seen the 30+ New posts which are suggestions cheers, will take a look and vote!

[Geo0rgi]

Very good how mich you listen to customers feedback and building a community this way.
If I have a bussinesnthats definetely the way I would want to improve it - listen to the feedback.
Interested when do you think of adding US shares ?

[Freetrade_Team1 (Freetrade_Team)]

Thank you! We want to add them soon -

The latest on the rollout

Weeks hopefully

[BethS (Beth)]

I really enjoy the loading screen logo on the video someone posted

(Also Android user )

[lucas]

Great App, everyone should be proud.

The experience is brilliant, really impressive accomplishment. It almost makes investing too easy!

Exciting times ahead

[Andy]

How do you earn a queue jump?

[Freetrade_Team1 (Freetrade_Team)]

Here’s the details-

Crowdcube Rewards

[marty (#69)]

Freetrade user #69 baby

Had a few issues getting in, thankfully the team have been awesome in helping sort things out.

– Initially couldn’t find my postcode, I believe that’s fixed now.
– Worth noting: you cannot top up from Revolut

I haven’t been able to properly play around as I’m waiting for my Revolut deposit to be returned to me, but the app is fast & beautiful so far.

Excited for things to come, congrats team.

[Lodgimus (User # 93)]

Yes I’ve noticed this with other brokers. Revolut is deemed to be a 3rd party transaction by many and therefore they want an account directly registered to you, no 3rd party proxy, for KYC purposes I guess.

[marty (#69)]

Yeah Revolut don’t have a UK banking license, they operate as a prepaid e-money card like quite a few others. Thankfully smart-banks with the full banking license are fine i.e. Monzo, Starling, etc

[Peter]

A few more thoughts / bits of feedback from me as I’ve gone from a couple of test shares to a portfolio of around 10 securities.

The app continues to be stable and more robust than I had feared it would be. Good job, Freetrade. That said, two slight issues:

• yesterday when placing buy orders, the app hung on the confirmation screen. Killing it then reopening showed that the orders had been queued successfully.
• I placed an order which for some reason wasn’t fulfilled. This morning, though, I had a great message in the app saying they’d noticed it hadn’t worked and were looking into it. Top service!

Some other thoughts:

• On the portfolio tab, I’m not sure that only showing some of your portfolio is useful. I know I can tap “see all” but wouldn’t it just be better to list them in one place. They’re at the bottom of the screen and I don’t mind scrolling.
• I was also slightly confused about what the price shown was. Being the portfolio screen, I initially thought that it was the purchase price. I wonder if there’s room for both prices? That’d be handy to know at a glance. That, or how much I’ve made / lost.
• when you tap into your shares, I’d rather have they information about your holding at the top of the screen, rather than the generic info / graph (that’s what I’m usually looking for and scrolling adds a smidgen more friction than necessary
• on the same screen, I didn’t understand the time period for the Stats section. I’m assuming it’s daily, but it’s not clear - and confused me when the market was shut.
• on the activity tab, I’m not sure of the logic of splitting out incomplete orders. Personally, I’d much rather a chronological feed (like Monzo), with issues alerted through a push notification
• when you tap into any orders on this screen, I wanted to repeat the order, or buy/sell from there. Especially for failed orders - I was looking for an easy “retry” button!
• I’m puzzled at why user info is under Portfolio rather than under Account (I spent a few minutes looking for it at one point)

That’s it for now. Hope this is helpful!

[freetrade_cal (Calum McWhir)]

@marty

Had a few issues getting in, thankfully the team have been awesome in helping sort things out.

Thanks for your patience. Every less than perfect experience at this point helps drive an improvement somewhere earlier in the process to help prevent it from recurring, and to know that you’re all supportive in this makes it that much easier.

Re: funding your account via something other than a ‘proper’ bank account, you guys are spot on. We’re working on messaging this clearly here and through other channels. It’s not easy to point out the difference between prepaid card X and bank Y without getting a little technical!

[weenie]

@marty

Thankfully smart-banks with the full banking license are fine i.e. Monzo, Starling, etc

Well that’s good news as I’ve been slowly loading up my Starling account in anticipation!

[kenny (Kenny Grant)]

Having used it for a few days, the biggest part I’d like to see fixed in the near term is the portfolio tab (which I know you’re aware of). A few of these points echo Peter above as I had exactly the same thoughts.

• The portfolio chart will need time ranges just like the stock charts - I suggest use the same for consistency
• The portfolio profit/loss needs some kind of indication of time - would time ranges with one selected be enough as on other charts? This is a bold decision and keeps the charts clean, I think I like it and it would work on portfolio as well.
• I would really like to see profit for the time period selected, not for just one day, on all charts
• The portfolio profit/loss needs to account for all costs (tax, commission)
• Stock lines should also show true cost IMO (particularly when calculating profit)
• When you tap into your shares, I’d rather have they information about your holding at the top of the screen
• I’d up the limit on stocks shown in lists here - should be more like 50 or 100 than 10, perhaps load them in queue for performance if you have to.
• I know it’s traditional to show it, but I don’t really care about the daily change (why should I as an investor?), unless I’m looking at the 1D period - I’d rather see either the change in my holding over all time, or the change over a given time period for the stock.

Other than these minor UI quibbles, it’s been working well, I’ve had one failed transaction so far (a 4pm order), which I count as quite good for this stage of testing, haven’t seen any crashes, had some weird behaviour when it had an intermittent network connection - you might want to look at going into offline mode if you timeout on connections to the server, then let the user go online again explicitly.

[Rob (Rob Sexton)]

To expand on Calum’s comment, there are a few reasons why we have to make sure we are receiving funds from a UK bank, in the strictest FCA definition of the word.

Firstly, for anti-money laundering, we have to be confident in the source of funds we receive, and when we pay them out where they are going. Prepaid card providers, and other alternative solutions, such as Revolut, do not provide us with sufficient information to allow us to meet our requirements.

Secondly, from an operational perspective, even where the banking alternatives (prepaid cards etc) provide you with a sortcode and account number, these are not the same as those provided by a bank. When we receive cash from one of these “accounts”, the actual payment often comes from a central pooled account with a completely different set of bank details. We therefore struggle to link the cash receipt to a customer. In addition, in a number of cases these “accounts” will not receive third party payments, and so we cannot return any withdrawals to you.

So unfortunately, despite some of the opportunities these alternative providers offer, we currently cannot accept payments from them, and this is unlikely to change in the near future.

[evangelskies (Eve)]

@kenny

I’d rather see either the change in my holding over all time, or the change over a given time period for the stock.

I thought this too, I know we can see the performance of the stock on the discover tab but if we could see the change over time in our portfolio that would be really helpful. Perhaps it doesn’t have to be daily- I’m planning on leaving them long-term anyway.