Freetrade is Out šŸ”„ Share your first thoughts once you get access!

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

(Also Android user :person_raising_hand:)

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3 posts were split to a new topic: Pending identity check

Great App, everyone should be proud. :clap:

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

Exciting times ahead :firecracker:

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How do you earn a queue jump?

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Hereā€™s the details-

A post was merged into an existing topic: Strangeness on Portfolio tab

Freetrade user #69 baby :sparkles:

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

ā€“ Initially couldnā€™t find my postcode, I believe thatā€™s fixed now.
ā€“ Worth noting: you cannot top up from Revolut

I havenā€™t been able to properly play around as Iā€™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.

:rocket:

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Yes Iā€™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.

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Yeah Revolut donā€™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

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A few more thoughts / bits of feedback from me as Iā€™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 wasnā€™t fulfilled. This morning, though, I had a great message in the app saying theyā€™d noticed it hadnā€™t worked and were looking into it. Top service!

Some other thoughts:

  • On the portfolio tab, Iā€™m not sure that only showing some of your portfolio is useful. I know I can tap ā€œsee allā€ but wouldnā€™t it just be better to list them in one place. Theyā€™re at the bottom of the screen and I donā€™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 thereā€™s room for both prices? Thatā€™d be handy to know at a glance. That, or how much Iā€™ve made / lost.
  • when you tap into your shares, Iā€™d rather have they information about your holding at the top of the screen, rather than the generic info / graph (thatā€™s what Iā€™m usually looking for and scrolling adds a smidgen more friction than necessary
  • on the same screen, I didnā€™t understand the time period for the Stats section. Iā€™m assuming itā€™s daily, but itā€™s not clear - and confused me when the market was shut.
  • on the activity tab, Iā€™m not sure of the logic of splitting out incomplete orders. Personally, Iā€™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 ā€œretryā€ button!
  • Iā€™m puzzled at why user info is under Portfolio rather than under Account (I spent a few minutes looking for it at one point)

Thatā€™s it for now. Hope this is helpful! :freetrade:

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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 youā€™re all supportive in this makes it that much easier.

Re: funding your account via something other than a ā€˜properā€™ bank account, you guys are spot on. Weā€™re working on messaging this clearly here and through other channels. Itā€™s not easy to point out the difference between prepaid card X and bank Y without getting a little technical!

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Well thatā€™s good news as Iā€™ve been slowly loading up my Starling account in anticipation! :smiley:

Having used it for a few days, the biggest part Iā€™d like to see fixed in the near term is the portfolio tab (which I know youā€™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, Iā€™d rather have they information about your holding at the top of the screen
  • Iā€™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 itā€™s traditional to show it, but I donā€™t really care about the daily change (why should I as an investor?), unless Iā€™m looking at the 1D period - Iā€™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, itā€™s been working well, Iā€™ve had one failed transaction so far (a 4pm order), which I count as quite good for this stage of testing, havenā€™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.

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To expand on Calumā€™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 ā€œaccountsā€, 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 ā€œaccountsā€ 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.

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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 doesnā€™t have to be daily- Iā€™m planning on leaving them long-term anyway.

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Seems to show first 6, which seems like a random number to cut off on.

Plus unsure how these are ordered, I thought it might be the latest first, but doesnā€™t seem like that now. In terms of default ordering, newest first or showing them alphabetically would make the most sense to me. Have I missed a obvious order here?

Ideally Iā€™d like a option to filter, order, and search the list on the Portfolio tab.

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Has there been any feedback with using Monzo? Positive or negative? Iā€™m debating which bank account to link up when I get the chance to sign up.

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Iā€™ve seen reports of very speedy transfers!

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Thereā€™s at least one other benefit to using Monzo - your withdrawals from Freetrade are shown the day before they arrive in your account.

I like the fact that the transfer reference (for topping up) is saved as well so that you can reuse it easily, although I know that other banks do that too..

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Sold! :sunglasses: I was a little concerned as I know there are issues with Revolut etc.

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