British Gordon Gekko-wannabes have reason to celebrate as Robinhood has launched a waiting list for its upcoming UK services.
From reports in January about the venture recruiting people to its London offices to it being authorized to trade in Britain by the Financial Conduct Authority in August, 2019 has been rife with signs that the US FinTech unicorn is gearing up to launch its commission-free stock-trading services in Blighty.
In what City A.M. describes as an open challenge to British rivals like Revolut and Freetrade, Robinhood has stated that it is rolling out an official waiting list for people interested in tapping into the services when they go live in Britain at the beginning of 2020.
Once the British service kicks off, it will empower users to trade in more than 3,500 US-denominated stocks as well as foreign stocks that are available to trade in dollars through depository receipts. That last category includes firms like Barclays and Burberry.
At the launch in the first quarter of next year, the Robinhood app will also give users access to tips and tricks of the trade through videos from the Wall Street Journal, CNN and Reuters, according to TechCrunch.
“We chose the UK as the place for our first international office because the market has a lot of talent and it’s a great place for FinTech, so it’s a great place for us to build our first office,” Wanders Rutgers, the boss of Robinhood’s UK operations, told City A.M.
The news comes as Robinhood is facing increased competition both at home in the US and across the globe.
In the US, Twitter top dog Jack Dorsey’s payments company Square has announced a function on its Cash App to enable users to trade stocks for free in a very Robinhoodish manner.
Moreover, when Y Combinator, the legendary accelerator, announced its fall 2019 batch, two startups – GreenTiger and TradeID – were launching similar services in India and in Indonesia.
That is on top of the story from the other week where a bug in the system that enabled Robinhood users to lend unlimited amounts of money to trade through the company’s services was shared on Reddit.
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