Wombat Invest beats Freetrade to launch UK fractional share trading

Crowdfunded startup Wombat Invest today launched fractional UK share trading for its customers, making it among the first low-cost share trading apps to do so.

To start with 17 UK equities including Ocado, Vodafone and Burberry are being made available to buy fractionally, with plans to grow that list to 25 in the coming weeks.

“People seem to forget about the UK,” Wombat CEO and founder Kane Harrison told AltFi.

“Everyone seems to focus on the US but there are some really cool local UK companies like Games Workshop, that are also global.”

Harrison told AltFi that Wombat’s UK-based custodian had made the launch of the feature not yet offered by Freetrade,Revolut or Stake possible.

“We’ve got 40 US fractionals in the pipeline, Uber, Tesla, Peloton, and 18 EU fractionals like Ferrari and LVMH.”

Wombat Invest is an entirely crowdfunded business, with the startup having raised two rounds in 2018 and 2019, and specialises in theme-based ETF portfolios and a small number of shares—as opposed to other fintechs who list thousands of equities and funds.

“The whole purpose of Wombat is to include the brands people know, if they go to Starbucks every day, they might want to own Starbucks,” said Harrison.

Wombat has over 17,000 customers and nearly half (45 per cent) are under 35.