Freetrade, an investment app which allows users to invest in the stock market with zero commission, has today launched a new campaign on crowdfunding platform Crowdcube in a bid to raise over £1m for its third fundraising round.
The company has said it will be using the funding to support its next phase of expansion, after releasing its app under a beta testing programme in April this year. Freetrade previously raised close to £1.3m via two earlier pre-product funding rounds on Crowdcube, the latter of which was overfunded by £800,000 after seeking an initial target of £300,000.
In a similar style to U.S. fintech unicorn Robinhood, which recently closed a $363m Series D round, Freetrade users can buy and sell UK stocks and ETFs via the app without having to pay any fees in commission or make a minimum investment. And over the next few months, the company hopes to launch access to US stocks, ISA products and cryptocurrency trading.
“The appetite for investing is intense, especially among millennials who, historically, have been restricted by artificial barriers like minimum account sizes, high commissions and overly complicated products,” said Adam Dodd, CEO and founder of Freetrade.
“We want to be able to offer them an awesome user-facing app that is free and accessible to all. We are focused on helping our customers discover and understand new investment opportunities, but also on providing great tools so that they understand their portfolio and make better investment decisions.”
Freetrade operates on the back of ‘basic trades’, which are free to make and are queued up to be executed at the end of each day. If they don’t want to wait, users can choose to speed up the process by paying £1 to make an ‘instant trade’. On top of that, Freetrade also offers a premium service called Alpha for £10 per month or £100 per year, which reduces the cost of an ‘instant trade’ down to 50p. When US trading goes live, it will cost £1 per trade for basic users and will be free for those on Alpha.
“Each funding round provides an opportunity to bring in thousands more passionate shareholders who want to change the rules of investing - just like we do,” added Dodds. “Our 1,200 investors are also customers, evangelists and ambassadors. If we can grow that to 10,000, that’s amazing for us.”
The first 24 hours of the campaign is a closed funding phase for Freetrade community members only, including all of those on the app’s 34,000 strong waiting list. The crowdfunding will be opened up to all Crowdcube investors tomorrow at 1pm.
