Fintech unicorn SoFi announced on Monday the general availability of its Stock Bits feature for SoFi Invest, offering the ability to buy and sell fractional shares with as little as $1 in over 50 popular stocks and ETFs ranging from Apple and Amazon, to Alphabet and Tesla.
According to SoFi, SoFi Invest is a free consumer investing service that offers stocks, ETFs, and roboadvising, with no commissions or SoFi management fees. SoFi Invest offers both active (brokerage) and automated (robo) investing, SoFi-branded ETFs, as well as real-time, curated investing news. SoFi reported that in the first month since releasing this feature broadly, it has seen sizable growth in engagement within SoFi Invest, in part due to Stock Bits:
- 63% of all first-time trades on the SoFi Invest platform are Stock Bits purchases
- 37% of total trades on SoFi’s Active Invest brokerage platform are Stock Bits
- Ownership in the three most popular stocks over $100 has gone up significantly: Amazon (AMZN) by 271%, Apple (AAPL) by 59%, and Disney (DIS) by 32%
Speaking about the feature launch, Anthony Noto, CEO at SoFi, stated:
“People are told to ‘buy what they like’, but when what they like costs over $100 or $1,000 per share, first-time investors are priced out. Investing is a financial requirement for achieving financial independence, and it is our focus to remove the barriers to getting started by providing features like Stock Bits for SoFi Invest.”
The company went on to add that it also plans to offer cryptocurrency trading through SoFi Invest in the coming months.