Robinhood cancels launch of its investing app in the UK
Commission-free stock trading app Robinhood has postponed its UK launch indefinitely.
The tech giant told people signed up to its UK waiting list that it had paused its expansion ambitions to focus primarily on its home market in the US.
It follows a City PM scoop last month which revealed Robinhood had pushed back the launch date but remained committed to becoming available by the end of the year.
The scaleup, which is based in California and valued at $8.3bn, has more than 13m users. It has won favour with Wall Street and millennials alike, with the average user age of 31.
“A lot has changed in the world over the past few months, and we’ve made the difficult decision to postpone our UK launch indefinitely,” Robinhood said in a statement. “As a company, we are refocusing our efforts on strengthening our core business in the U.S.”
“Although our global expansion plans are on hold for now, we’re committed to democratising finance for more people around the world. We look forward to the day when we can bring this mission to the UK.”
The coronavirus pandemic and subsequent stock market volatility has proved fruitful for the platform, which said it gained a record 3m new customers in the first quarter of 2020 alone.
However its popularity has also led to Robinhood being beset by outages at crucial trading times. The tech firm was hit by three outages in two weeks as markets boiled over in March, with one lasting as long as 17 hours.