Dear Community,
We are not a bank.
We are dependent on the banking system to provide services a stockbroker may not or can not. One of those services is FX conversion.
As of late this morning (29th January 2020), our banking provider, one of the big banks in the UK, suddenly decided to severely limit the rate of how many FX conversion trades (US trades) they choose to support, resulting in an 18x reduction in the volume of US trades we can accept.
You heard me on Sky News this morning. We are with you, the retail investor. We are guided by treating customers fairly.
What little number of FX conversion trades this bank chose to support, we have to distribute in the fairest way possible. We allocate bandwidth in a way that, unless any technical challenges, all sell transactions should behave as normal, albeit with a potentially longer wait time to confirm your trade. Right now, all buy transactions are unfortunately blocked.
Our team are working around the clock to resume normal access.
We will update this post as soon as we have news for you.
UPDATE 1: We appreciate you may have signed up for Plus as a result of our commitment to keep systems up and running for you and keep stocks accessible. We will review this and do right by you if you are affected. Please give our customer service team some time to review Plus signups and reach out.
UPDATE 2: Sells were enabled on all US stocks shortly after 3 PM, and we are slowly enabling buys on some other US stocks. You’ll be able to find these on a new collection on your app:
Currently available: (will be regularly updated)
Airbnb
Alibaba
Alphabet
Amazon
AMD
American
Aphria
Aurora
Beyond Meat
BioNano Genomics
Bit Digital
Boeing
Canaan Creative
Churchill Capital IV
Clean Energy Fuels
Clover Health
Coca-Cola
Corsair
Crispr Therapeutics
Disney
Eastman Kodak
EHang
Enphase Energy
Eos Energy
Etsy
Express
Facebook
First Majestic
Fiverr
fuboTV
FuelCell
Gevo
Intel
Jumia
Lemonade
Li Auto
Marathon Patent
Maxeon Solar Technologies
Microsoft
Moderna
Nano Dimension
Netflix
Nikola
Nvidia
PayPal
Pfizer
Plug Power
QuantumScape
ReneSola
Riot Blockchain
Shopify
Social Capital V
Square
Switchback Energy
Tattooed Chef
Tilray
Workhorse
Xpeng
Important disclaimer: this is not a recommendation to buy any of the stocks in the new Currently available collection. We created this collection to be able to showcase what was available to investors.
UPDATE 3: We cancelled batch orders that would have executed from 3 PM today and we returned your cash to your balance.
You can see confirmation of this cancellation on your Activity tab.
UPDATE 4: We’re continuing to do everything possible to rectify the situation caused by our partner’s decision today, and are very sorry for the frustration this has caused.
All Plus members will have their January subscription fee refunded.