Sure but then it is not earning interest and that damages the returns on my portfolio.
Isnāt that the price you pay for using an in development platform?
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Not really noā¦ either pay interest on holdings like other brokers or work around the problem by offering instant top ups. A development product will never successfully compete if it is not as good.
Soooā¦ If Freetrade will pay you interest, allow to trade for free and pay for your instant transfers, how exactly would you suggest they make revenue to grow further?
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The same as any other broker would? I would expect Freetrade to offer a sufficiently good premium product (Alpha) that I would pay to subscribe to that. I would also expect people, especially as Freetrade begins to attract more serious investors with larger sums of money, to execute paid trades. Broker margins across the world are being squeezed, that is the way the industry is going.
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For me personally (I donāt have large enough stacks of cash to ālose moneyā from not getting interest by holding money in my Freetrade account), the accessibility of stock trading by having no minimum amounts and things such as free trades and low instant trade fees outweigh a need for an instant money transfer.
In addition, I think the delay in transfer actually benefits me sometimes. I will sometimes spend that time while waiting for the money to come through to do some extra research into the stock Iām interested in. Iām also on the camp that believes that speculative trading will more often than not provide losses 
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Sure but, by definition, you are losing interest you could have otherwise earnt on your money. Also speculative trading is extremely common nowadays. Technically, buying any share and hoping to sell it for more than you paid for it is speculative trading. You are relying on the price of your investment rising. Only buying bonds and relying on the coupon payments and things like that are non speculative.
Itās an estimate of the lower end, yeah. Stock prices change, and we feel there are interesting businesses in that price range.
Indeed we increased the upper end from Ā£80 to about Ā£200, and depending on the usage of this feature, we might not stop there. 
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I meanā¦ thatās literally the price you pay. Youāre using a platform thatās inferior to almost every other option out there because itās in such early stages of development. Itās not like they can just magic up all these features, they take time.
So that is the price you pay for using a very new in development platform.
If you want interest on your money before itās invested you can use HL, vanguard or others.
Perhaps a special priced instant transfer and instant trade combo would be desirable for the occasions when a quick turn-around is required?
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For my 2p worth I think the app and service Freetrade supplies is Bob on considering itās an early start up. I for one have no complaints, yes it takes a couple of hours to get money transferred but hey, I am at work anyway so am not watching the markets for a deal 24/7. In my understanding Freetrade is an investment platform.
Rome was not built in a day, I would rather have a sparkly new platform that performs well than something rushed and is glitchy. I think those of us who have invested believe in Freetrade and are prepared to wait for the finished product.
Once it is out there for all to see, a substandard platform is unlikely to rocket them into the stratosphere. You canāt polish a turd as they say 
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Hey, UK bank transfers are instant already.
Due to a mix of systems we donā fully own at the moment, the current process involves a manual release by FT staff that is done during regular working hours. Not ideal, but not that big a deal imo considering working hours are the same as open market hours. Weāre holding off on going full straight-through-processing for top-ups until weāre fully on our own system for this, which weāre already using internally.
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There is the Ā£ ultrashort bond ETF. This is very low risk with annual returns that are arguably better than if Freetrade paid interest on cash balances. It says it also pays dividends twice a year, so could be a good place to store money before finding opportunities in the marketā¦
*My thoughts only, always do your own research! 
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Thank you for the great suggestion 
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But this requires two separate interactions with Freetrade, because you donāt allow the placing of an order which canāt be funded at order placement time, even if the order will be able to be funded at execution time.
Eg, letās say I open up the Freetrade app over coffee on Saturday morning and, after some browsing around, decide, āRight. Iām going to invest Ā£500 in Vodafone and Ā£500 in JD Sports.ā You send a bank transfer of Ā£1000 but canāt actually place your orders for the Vodafone and JD Sports stock. Where are you supposed to keep a note of the fact that you made a decision (which you donāt want to have to re-make later) to buy specifically those stocks and those amounts of them? You end up having to create a note or something in your Notes app and then set a reminder to yourself to come back to Freetrade on Monday to place your orders. Obviously this is an utter developed country problem, but one which is still annoying.
Couldnāt you loosen up the rules for order placement? Let people place whatever orders they like - currently funded or otherwise - and then just prioritise their execution at execution time based on the order they were placed, failing those for which there are, at that point, insufficient funds?
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I doubt though allocation of the funds to our FT accounts are happening as in my case I observed that it took few hours during normal working hours
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Donāt think there instant but mine take at most 40 mins to clear if its during there working hours and as I donāt use instant trades it doesnāt matter to me at the minute but they are working on making bank transfers faster.
Instant deposits is on the Freetrade roadmap (Stock trading (zero commission) & investment app | Freetrade) for near term (next few months). The description is Top up, wait a few seconds, itās there.
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Out of interest - how much interest do you get on cash you hold with your other brokers?