Revolut’s premium Metal customers can now make up to 100 commission-free stock trades per month direct from the bank’s app. The digital bank plans to roll out the service to its Standard and Premium customers “in the coming weeks.”

Metal is Revolut’s top offering and costs £12.99 a month or £120 a year, while a Premium account costs £6.99 a month or £70 a year. Standard accounts are free to use.

US stocks only

At the moment, Revolut customers can only buy 300 stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, and trading is only available when the US markets are open between 9:30am and 16:00pm EST (2.30pm to 9pm in the UK). Customers can see real-time prices in the Revolut app.

Access to British and European markets, the ability to buy shares in an Isa wrapper, and access to exchange traded funds (ETFs) are expected to be added in the future.

Fractional shares

In a bid to make trading and investing accessible to more people, Revolut also allows customers to buy fractional shares for as little as US $1.

This enables small-scale investors to invest in companies where a single share costs a thousand dollars or more, and that might otherwise be out of their budget. A single Amazon share, for example, costs about $1,866 today.

Commission-free trading

Revolut Metal customers will be able to make up to 100 trades each month, without paying any commissions for those individual trades.

When trading is rolled out to all Revolut’s customers, Premium customers will be able to make eight free trades a month, and Standard customers three free trades a month.

After the free trades have been used, the fee is £1 commission fee per trade. Revolut will also charge a 0.01 percent “annual custody fee.” So if your investment portfolio is worth £100,000, your annual custody fee would be £10.

Revolut has partnered with US broker DriveWealth to offer the trading service.

Revolut founder Nik Storonsky said: “Investing in the stock market has been closed off to ordinary people for far too long, which has led to real problems for people as they search for effective ways to make the most out of their savings.

“We’ve made sure that investing through Revolut is low cost, easy to use and available to everyone, even if they only want to try with very small amounts.”

Revolut was founded in 2015 and started life as a prepaid travel card. It now has about 6 million users and is valued at about £1.4bn. It was granted a European banking licence in December 2018.