Not sure whats happened with my money?

Karmazza · 12 February 2021 16:12

Hello, I opened a freetrade account this morning and signed up with my starling bank account via Google pay. After creating the account I then transferred £50 into my freetrade from this account to get me started.

I changed my mind on wanting to invest on stocks at the moment until I gather more knowledge. I decided to try and withdraw my £50 back into my account. Upon choosing to withdraw, it asked me to supply a bank account to withdraw the payment to. I used my other personal bank account details (I have two accounts). After this, it asked me to copy a reference and send £1 to confirm the card, so I did this.

Upon opening my account to send the £1 I noticed that a payment of £50 had just been taken out of the account (without my consent or knowledge). I still went ahead and transferred the £1 as well to hopefully recieve my funds back.

After looking on the app, my current funds available says £50 and not £100 as freetrust had taken £50 from my starling account and then (without my consent upon trying to withdraw this) another £50 out of my other account.

In the Google pay starling account the money taken out is titled freetrade on my other account (again the one that I didn’t consent to), the £50 taken is titled pay with truelayer.

I haven’t recieved any funds back yet or word from the chat within the app.

Can anyone assist me to what is going on? Kind of worried about my money right now.

Hope I’ve explained this okay,

Thanks.

J4ipod94 · 12 February 2021 16:27

Hi Louis

When you sign up you choose a bank account to link to your Freetrade account. It sounds like you then chose to top up £50 using Google Pay.

For money laundering reasons FT cannot let you top up using Google Pay and then withdraw into your bank account.

If you would like to withdraw any of your funds you would first need to fund your account using your linked bank account at least once (which looks like you’ve begun the process via Truelayer integration).

The additional £50 you deposited from your Bank account via TrueLayer Open Banking APIs would take around 2-4 hours to reach your account and perhaps longer if your personal details could not be matched automatically. You will receive a notification when this has reached your account.

Once this has reached your account you can then withdraw your funds (£50 from Google Pay + £50 from your linked bank) which can take 3-5 working days.

Any financial decisions are totally yours to make but I’d consider investing this money in an Index tracker ETF to dip your toes into the market. That’s how I got started and then I read around what investing is all about.

I hope that makes sense to you

Karmazza · 12 February 2021 16:33

I appreciate your reply and also thanks for the suggestion for investing as well.

The problem I have is that I did not top up an additional £50 with my personal account, it just took £50 out of the account without consent when I was trying to withdraw my fund of £50 that I put in via my Google pay account. I didn’t click top up only withdraw. I also don’t have a clue who or what truelayer is.

I thought that after seeing it took an additional £50, that my balance on my freetrade account would now show £100 and not just £50. So now I’m wondering where the £50 has gone which is bad enough nevermind not consenting to it being taken out in the first place. Feel like I’ve been robbed and now have to wait days to recieve my money back and I’m completely unsure if I will be getting the full £101 that’s been sent to freetrade in total.

J4ipod94 · 12 February 2021 16:40

That is a rather odd as when I top up my reference with my bank account doesn’t include “TrueLayer”.

All that I can suggest is to start an in-app chat with support and wait patiently for a response. Customer support have a huge backlog of queries so it might take them several days to get back. The money won’t have vanished it might be a case of some manual intervention by the team.

Karmazza · 12 February 2021 17:08

Thanks for your time in responding mate, I’ll just await their reply and hopefully get it resolves as I have evidence of the money coming out of my account etc.