Recurring Payments/Direct Debits

Ideas 💡
1

All,

Freetrade is doing a great job in adding new shares and ETF’s.

But the one thing lacking for me to consider putting more money into my account compared to more traditional brokers is the lack of a capability to set up a direct debit or a recurring debit card payment.

Many people invest in funds/ETF’s/Shares on a monthly basis with a drip feed into their accounts each month.

In other words, once a month take £500 from my current account and invest it a particular ETF so that my investments gets averaged out over time and I can regularly invest without having to top up each time.

Is this on Freetrade’s agenda at all? This feels like a sizeable missing part of the puzzle to accelerate growth for many who still use the traditional platforms…

2

Cant take too long to do manually though? Once a month. Surely you would log in more than that and could do a few trades while there?

3

I feel like you are talking about two things here. Do you just mean a standing bank transfer (which you should be able to do with any bank, nothing to do with freetrade) or automatical investing? The latter is definitely a feature in-planning.

1 Like
4

I think he means like HL you can have a standing order that automatically invests in say 10 ETFs on 1st each month

5

Why not just setup a standing order? Same as a DD except you are in full control of it.

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6

I totally agree with you @anon61375311, and this is very much aligned with the long term saver/investor segment that :freetrade: targets. Notwithstanding costs to the business associated with Direct Debits, it’s a worthwhile feature.

This will also be important for AutoInvest to function seamlessly from a client perspective, and for max uptake, you really want the ability to set this up in app with as few clicks as possible. I think this is one of the key drivers behind MoneyBox’s success - 450,000 clients and counting, with £1bn AUA - it’s just a super simple in app process to set up a DD.

Anything that removes friction from the client experience is only a good thing, especially when it comes to account funding. Cue the “yeah but why don’t you just…”

2 Likes
7

None of the existing companies which offer this provide standing orders - they all just offer DD’s

8

No I’m talking about one thing.

9

Why would I want to do it manually though? When I can line it up automatically on other platforms?

10

Alternative to DD could be a regular recurring debit card payment - although this will be more expensive for FT

11

My understanding of a standing order is that it is something you setup yourself with your bank, to make a regular payment to a recipient using the correct reference - exactly like we pay in to FT at the moment, just automated. But maybe I’m getting confused as I haven’t used one in a while.

12

FreeTrade struggles with standing orders. The full identifiable information doesn’t get sent over so it can take them a number of days to manually process the deposit.
I had one set up but it was a big headache to sort out, I went back to manual deposits.

1 Like
13

Good to know, cheers

14

I’m voting for the AutoInvest feature, I use Wombat and using its DD + AutoInvest feature I can automate my investments to their ETF funds.
I would like the same thing in FT

15

I think being able to setup scheduled payments for stocks is a great idea for value averaging.

Put X amount into free trade then have it but a specific stock every Y days, weeks, months etc