Square announces free stock trading, joining growing field of competition

Service initially available to some Cash App users

One more company has officially jumped on the free stock trading bandwagon. Over the next few weeks, Jack Dorsey’s Square will start allowing customers to buy and sells stocks for free on its cash payments app.

The San Francisco-based company started testing the new feature of its Cash App in September, Bloomberg earlier reported. Now, Square has begun rolling it out to non- employees, though it’s still only available to a small subset of the app’s customers, a company spokesman said. The product will be available for all users by the end of 2019.

For years, free stock trading was the purview of only a few platforms like Robinhood Markets, which now has a valuation of $7.6 billion. But earlier this month, one of the largest brokerages, Charles Schwab, announced plans to eliminate commissions for U.S. stocks, exchange traded funds and options. TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. followed suit, slashing its commissions to zero the same day, and E*Trade Financial Corp. the day after. Fidelity Investments, Vanguard Group and Interactive Brokers have also eliminated fees and commissions on a range of offerings.

Square’s Cash App started out by letting users send money to friends, and has since expanded into debit cards and Bitcoin trading. While Square doesn’t consistently give updates on how many people are using Cash App, the company said it had more than 15 million monthly active users as of last December. In its most recent letter to shareholders, Square said that revenue from Cash App was $135 million for the quarter, excluding Bitcoin.