Where’s my money?

A helpful guide outlining why your deposit may not have reached your Freetrade account yet.

Updated over a week ago

Deposits from your bank account are processed every 2-4 hours, Monday to Friday, 8am - 8:30pm (excluding bank holidays).

If your deposit hasn't arrived within our processing times, there’s a number of reasons why this could be:

1. Did you deposit via Apple Pay or Google Pay?

Deposits from Apple Pay and Google Pay should arrive in your account immediately. If this isn’t the case, please drop us an in-app message so that we can investigate this for you.

2. Did you send it from your linked bank account?

We only accept deposits from your linked bank account. If you’ve sent money from another account, this won’t be applied. Send us a message in-app and we can talk through your options here.

3. Did you send money from an e-money institution?

You can send money from any UK-authorised bank account or a FCA-regulated account. We accept certain e-money institutions at our discretion, these include WISE & Revolut. We cannot accept payments from providers such as Monese and OnePay because they are not authorised as banks or FCA-regulated. If you deposited via these e-money institutions we won’t apply your money to your account and we will need to return it to you.

4. Did you send this from a personal account that’s in your name?

If you own a company, you can’t use your business bank account to make a deposit. Nor can another person make a deposit on your behalf from their bank account. In both these cases, we will need to return your deposit back to the account it originated from.

5. Did you include your unique reference?

Your unique reference is just that - unique to you. If you have both a GIA and ISA, you’ll have two different references. Your reference is what directs your money to your Freetrade account. Not including it or mis-typing it means that your money cannot be allocated to your account automatically. It’s then dependent on you contacting us regarding your deposit so that we can locate it and apply it to your account.

6. Is your name registered with the bank the same as the one you use for Freetrade?

If you’ve changed your name, you have a long or double-barrelled name, or use a joint account to deposit into your Freetrade account, your money might not be automatically allocated either. This is because the remitter details on the payment received may not match the name registered on your Freetrade account and this discrepancy will be flagged. Often, we’ll need sight of a bank statement from the account you sent the funds from in order to allocate your deposit. We’ll make a note in our records to expect this so that it doesn’t delay future deposits.

7. Does your bank use an intermediary bank to make deposits?

If your banking institution uses an intermediary bank to send money overseas then this may delay your cash appearing in your account. This is because we will receive remitter details relating to the intermediary bank instead of yours, so the payment isn’t automatically identifiable. We’ll need sight of a bank statement evidencing the payment from you in order to apply the deposit in this situation.

8. Did you send this as a standing order or bill payment?

These take typically 3-5 working days to apply to your account as they require remitter details to be received from the bank and some manual processing from our side.

Important to note: If you’ve sent money to Freetrade which hasn’t arrived and we’ve not been able to get in contact with you, we’ll ask our bank to process a return of funds to the account the deposit came from after 5 working days.

If it’s been more than 4 hours your deposit may have been affected by one of these issues, please reach out by in-app chat by navigating to:

“Portfolio” tab > Profile icon > “Contact us” > "Send us a message" > “My money” > “My deposit hasn’t arrived”. 🙏

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