Fintech start-up Robinhood settled to launch its zero-fee stock trading app in the United Kingdom. The Menlo Park, the California-based company, said on Wednesday that the firm opening a waiting list for people to sign up to the app instead of a complete launch planned for next year. Robinhood received broker approval from the Financial Conduct Authority over the summer to introduce its services in the country. President of Robinhood’s United Kingdom business, Wander Rutgers, says in an interview that they are taking the best of years of product development in the United States to the United Kingdom’s customers. Users all over the country have the authority to sign up for early access.

The organization will have a goal to launch the app by early 2020; therefore, they have an expectation of seeing customers having it on their fingertips in Q1 of the coming year, he said. The United Kingdom is home to a prosperous financial technology sector, with firms such as Revolut, Starling, and Monzo gaining grip over the previous few years thanks to their application-based checking accounts that do not take any type of charges. Recently Revolut announced that it would go to take online brokerage space with its own commission-free share trading service.

Co-founder of Robinhood, Vlad Tenev Views about the New Move

One factor that led to the growing popularity of the supposed challenger banks has their word-of-mouth approach to picking up people, where users start referring their family members and friends to the financial upstarts’ apps. Co-CEO and co-founder of Robinhood, Vlad Tenev, called this approach the secret sauce behind the growth of the group in the United States. According to him, they came to know that the United Kingdom is going to be a tough market. It’s a competitive market, not just because of the challenging landscape, but also the customers have discriminating tastes, they quite sophisticated and extensive history of financial products exists there.

Also, Robinhood will find itself competing with mandatory online brokers such as Hargreaves Lansdown – which charges over £11.95 per order – and upstart broker Free trade. However, Rutgers said that he does not believe in the United Kingdom, a country of investors yet. He hopes the firm will able to help millennials who usually shy away from investing because they think it’s expensive or complex. Once Robinhood launches its services in full, the organization says it won’t charge any fees of foreign exchange – users will able to convert pounds into dollars at the mid-market rate – and the customers of the United Kingdom will be able to start investing with as less as £1.

Main Inspiration of Robinhood to select its name

Customers of Robinhood will able to trade more than 3,500 United States stocks, including Amazon and Nike, and one thousand international shares, including Barclays and Burberry. Since the establishment of Robinhood in 2013, it gained a noteworthy grip, with six million users signed up to its platform in the United States. The firm derives its name from the legendary hero Robin Hood, claiming it wishes to democratize financial services. However, its speedy development has not been without a few problems along the way. The start-up had to backpedal on its plans to roll out savings and to check accounts because of a regulatory snag rather than switching focus to a cash management account, which it initiated last month. The recently initiated cash account offers a modest interest rate of 2.05 percent.

Recently, Robinhood suffered a malfunction that enabled people to get access to what referred to at the time as an infinite influence. The bug efficiently allowed users to cheat the margin trading tool of the app – which allows users to borrow money to make trades – giving them access to what basically free money. Tenev said it demoralized by an impartially limited number of customers, and the incident fixed comparatively quickly. How the firm makes money also has a source of argument, as the investing platform receives a huge chunk of its revenues from order refunds. Also identified as payment for order flow, this involves selling trades to high-frequency trading companies, a common practice on Wall Street.

Robinhood Gold

Other than this, the company also makes money from its service of subscription, Robinhood Gold, as well as interest in customer cash. Nonetheless, Robinhood becomes a force to estimate within finance, nothing a massive $7.6 billion assessment following a $323 million funding round declared in July. Asked if the start-up seeing an IPO, Tenev said it surely imagines becoming a public firm finally but had no particular details to share at the time.

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