Freetrade aims to cut costs with launch of in-house brokerage platform

Low-cost stock trading app makes a game-changing infrastructure play.

Free stock trading app Freetrade today revealed that it has been quietly developing its own brokerage platform for over a year, and is turning it live this week for all customers.

Brokerage is the expensive process of sending customers trades to the market, settling those trades and transferring shares between buyers and sellers.

With the launch of Invest by Freetrade, as the platform is called, Freetrade now believes it can “dramatically” reduce its trading costs.

"We have built from scratch the most modern brokerage platform in the world," said Adam Dodds, Freetrade’s CEO and Founder.

“Nobody else cares about our customers as much as we do. That’s why we decided to make what may have seemed like an enormous investment for an early-stage startup in mid-2018.”

Last month Freetrade raised $15m in a Series A funding round led by Draper Esprit, the startup’s first venture capital round as until now it has been funded entirely via crowdfunding.

Beta-testing customers have been using Freetrade’s brokerage platform already for around a week, while the company announced all customers will shortly be migrated to the new platform.

With Invest by Freetrade in place “thousands more stocks and ETFs” can be added as Freetrade connects with new trading venues at a lower cost.

Dodds also confirmed that real-time deposits, the launch of Freetrade’s first premium accounts, and fractional shares in UK and European stocks are all arriving “in the coming weeks”.

Finally next year an Invest by Freetrade API will be launched, and while few details were given, this will supposedly give third-parties access to Freetrade’s low-cost trading platform for the first time.