Investment Apps Complete Guide
Investment apps allow you to buy and manage financial assets directly from your smartphone. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore everything you need to know about investing apps, including how safe they are, how to set one up, and how to use them to start investing.
Reading time: 23 min
Written by:
Dan Malone
What Is An Investment App?
An investment app lets you invest your money in assets like stocks, ETFs and bonds. These apps are made available to Irish investors by regulated investment companies across the European Union.
Getting started is simple:
- 1Download an App
- 2Complete Onboarding
- 3Top Up Your Account
- 4Start Investing
Looking for the best investing apps? Our comparison tool allows you to compare platforms based on features and fees. Try it out for yourself now.
Beginner Tip: Investment apps go by many names. Investing platforms, trading apps and online brokers are all variations of the same thing.
Why Investment Apps Are Needed
Trading apps are needed to access the stock market and the stock exchanges within it. When you buy stocks using an app, your order is electronically sent to a stock exchange, where you’re matched with a seller. The shares are then purchased and delivered to your account. In many cases, your order will be sent to market makers who are wholesale buyers and sellers of financial assets.
Key Insight: The stock market isn’t a physical place. It’s a collection of stock exchanges accessed electronically with an investing app.
What Is The Stock Market?
The stock market is where company stocks and other financial assets are bought and sold. It’s made up of multiple stock exchanges, which are individual marketplaces that list what’s available for investment.
Imagine you go to a Christmas market to buy ornaments, clothes or Christmas cards. Each stall at the Christmas market sells something unique and the market itself is made up of all of the different stalls.
The concept is similar for the stock market. Instead of Christmas goods, you’re buying shares in companies from around the world. Instead of stalls, you have stock exchanges. Each exchange will have stocks available for you to choose from. The stock market, as a whole, is made up of these different exchanges.
However, unlike Christmas stalls, which sell you the goods directly, stock exchanges facilitate trading between buyers and sellers.
Imagine you walked up to a stall at the Christmas market. You want to buy an ornament that the stall facilitates trading in. The stall doesn’t sell you the ornament directly. Instead, it matches you with someone else who is looking to sell that ornament.
That’s the reason why stock exchanges exist - to match buyers and sellers of specific company stocks with one another.
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Are Trading Apps Safe?
Yes, these platforms are perfectly safe to use, as long as they’re regulated. In fact, there’s never been a major collapse of a modern, regulated stock trading platform in Europe. Even in the unlikely event that an investment app were to fail, your investments and cash are protected in different ways.
Asset segregation is where an investing app keeps all of your investments and cash separate to its own business assets. This means your money will be kept safe even if the investing platform goes under. This is a legal requirement under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID).
There are different ways that an investing platform can segregate its clients assets, often used in conjunction with one another:
| Asset Segregation Method | Description |
|---|---|
| Omnibus Accounts | Combines multiple client assets into a segregated account that are held with a 3rd party |
| Individual Accounts | Dedicated segregated accounts for each client held with a 3rd party |
| Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) | A separate company with no shareholders whose sole purpose is to passively hold client assets |
Key Insight: Asset segregation means that your cash and investments can’t be touched by creditors of an investing platform who are looking to settle debts in a bankruptcy.
When you invest using an investing app there’s a custody chain. The custody chain for investments refers to the sequence of 3rd parties who are responsible for the protective care of your investments.
It’s not only the failure of our investing platform that we should care about, it’s the potential failure of any of the 3rd parties in the custody chain. Asset segregation rules are different in every country and in some cases it may not be possible or legally required. If a 3rd party in the custodian chain fails and they don’t use asset segregation, that could result in a loss of investments, even if your broker hasn't failed.
Most investment firms will require their partnered brokers and custodians to use asset segregation in order to protect your investments from their respective failures.
Custody Chain Example: Say you invest in Japanese shares using an investing app. First, a Japanese broker will buy the shares on the Japanese market at the instruction of your investing platform. Second, the Japanese broker will assign ownership of the shares to a Japanese custodian. A custodian is an entity that has the responsibility of protecting your investments.
The shares themselves will be held at the Japanese Central Securities Depository (CSD). In most cases, it’s the CSD that will be listed on the shareholder register of the company whose shares you’re buying. Third, the Japanese custodian will assign ownership of the shares to the investing platform’s custodian.
Finally, ownership of the shares will be assigned to you, at which point the shares will be reflected in your portfolio. In that custody chain there’s a Japanese broker, a Japanese custodian, the Japanese CSD, your broker’s custodian and potentially an SPV.
The Investor Compensation Scheme (ICS) is an EU protection scheme which requires investors to be compensated when they sustain financial loss if a financial services firm fails. The compensation available under this additional layer of protection is 90% of the investor’s loss, often subject to a maximum of €20,000.
This is one reason why we recommend using more than one investing app. More apps means more of your investments will be covered by the ICS. Our comparison tool allows you to find trusted and regulated investing apps operating in Ireland for maximum ICS coverage. Try it out for yourself now.
ICS compensation is paid for by the firms themselves and doesn’t rely on taxpayer money. The ICS doesn’t cover:
- Losses arising from bad advice
- Losses arising from normal market conditions
You can seek redress for losses arising from bad advice from the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman (FSPO).
Investing platforms may partner with regulated banks to hold your uninvested cash deposits until they’re withdrawn or invested. Deposits held with a partner bank will usually be covered by the EU Deposit Guarantee Scheme (DGS) up to €100,000 in the unlikely event of that bank’s failure.
Certain investing apps may hold your cash deposits with an Electronic Money Institution (EMI). The DGS won’t apply, but all of your money will be safeguarded through asset segregation. If the investing platform went under, your money would be protected in full less any cost of returning the funds to you.
Investing platforms use a wide range of cutting-edge security features to keep your account safe from bad actors. Examples include, but aren’t limited to:
- Whitelisted Bank Accounts
- Biometric Authentication
- Data Encryption
- Session Timeouts
- Trusted Devices
Stay Safe: Never invest your money with an unregulated investing platform. Be cautious of unsolicited emails with links to external sites. When you open an account with an investing app through Honest, you’ll have peace of mind that you’re being redirected to a legitimate investment firm.
How To Choose An Investment App
There are lots of trading apps available to Irish investors. Most do similar things and there aren’t huge differences between the most competitive options. The most important factors to consider when choosing a platform are:
- 1Fees
- 2Safety
- 3Investment selection
You should choose the platform with the lowest fees, the best security features and the largest selection of investments.
To discover low-fee investing platforms in Ireland, check out our Investing Platform Comparison Tool.
Commission-Free Investment Apps
Commission-free investing has become the norm for many online brokerage apps. This is a positive development, especially for the average investor who may only be investing €100 per month. If they were charged a large fixed commission on their investments, it would hardly be worth their while.
Jargon Buster: A commission is a fee charged by an investing platform for executing a buy or sell order on behalf of the investor. It could be a fixed fee, like €1 per transaction, or a variable fee, like 1% of the transaction value. Commissions are damaging to returns, especially over long periods of time.
‘Zero-commission’ doesn’t mean investing is free, however. Different fees are charged for different actions. The goal is to find the investing app that best facilitates your investing intentions at the lowest cost. To do that, you need to be aware of the main costs of zero-commission brokers:
Deposit fees are fees that are charged on the deposits that you make to your brokerage account. For example, if an app charges a 1% deposit fee and you transfer €1,000 to your account, then the app would charge a deposit fee of €10.
Deposit fees are highly unattractive to investors because you’re paying money for the simple luxury of transferring money to your brokerage account – before you've even invested in anything!
Fortunately, deposit fees are uncommon, and where they do exist, they’re usually 100% avoidable. They usually crop up where the platform allows you to transfer money to your account using credit cards, debit cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Key Insight: Deposit fees can be avoided by using bank transfers to send money to your account. This can be a slower process, but, over the long term, it will prove to be far less costly.
Not all investments are priced in euros. If you use euros to invest in a stock that’s quoted in USD, GBP or another currency, there will be a currency conversion. The same is true when selling or receiving non-euro dividends, the funds must be converted back into euros before the cash hits your account.
Most online brokers handle this process for you and all of the necessary currency exchanges are executed automatically. However, more often than not, there is a fee associated with this. If the foreign currency conversion fee was 0.25%, it would cost you €2.50 to invest €1,000 in a non-euro denominated stock.
If you plan on frequently investing in financial products that aren’t denominated in euros, then FX fees should be a top consideration.
Key Insight: Certain platforms offer a multi-currency account where you can hold and invest different currencies. This feature allows you to bypass FX fees on purchases, sales and receipts of investment income.
Transaction and service fees are the fees you pay for using different services on an investing platform. Different brokers charge fees for different services. Some brokers might charge a fee for a particular service while another broker, who provides an identical service, might charge no fee. Other platforms may charge you a maintenance fee for the luxury of simply having an account! Certain fees will be specific to a single broker.
In the past, certain investing platforms used PFOF as a way to generate revenue. This allowed them to charge low or no commissions to customers. If a broker used PFOF, it meant they were sending some or all of its customers orders to one single market maker. The market maker is a firm, separate to the broker, who is a wholesale buyer and seller of stocks. They keep the markets running smoothly and earn a small profit on each transaction.
The incentive to use PFOF is that the market maker gets a steady stream of customers from the broker and the broker gets a slice of the profit made by the market maker. The criticism of PFOF is that it has the potential to lead to less favourable outcomes for investors. Namely, a situation where an investor isn’t offered the best available price for a particular investment because the broker has opted to go with one single market maker. That is a real cost to you, the investor. PFOF was banned in the EU from June 30th 2026.
Some brokers will lend your investments out to short sellers. This is what’s known as securities lending and many brokers do this in order to earn additional revenue for their business. It doesn’t come at a direct cost to you – in fact the broker may even share the profits – but it’s an additional risk to consider.
In most cases, the only way that you could lose money from this is if the shares aren’t returned and both the borrower and the broker went bankrupt. However, you’d receive any cash or stock collateral that the borrower was required to post when borrowing your shares. So your loss would be limited to any difference between the value of the stocks lost and the collateral posted. That loss could be eligible for a claim under the Investor Compensation Scheme (ICS).
When you buy a stock, you pay the asking price. When you sell a stock, you receive the bidding price. The bid-ask spread is the difference between these two prices and it’s a real cost to investors. Say a stock has a bid price of €9 and an ask price of €10. If you were to buy that stock and immediately sell it, you’d make a loss of €1, plus whatever other fees you paid to make the trade.
The difference of €1 is the bid-ask spread and this difference is the potential profit that the market maker is making on the transaction. The primary factor which influences the size of the spread is liquidity, i.e. the ease at which the investment can be converted back into cash. The liquidity of an investment is influenced by supply and demand. For example, an S&P 500 company stock will have much smaller spreads than a company listed on the Indonesian stock exchange.
Key Insight: The broker has no control over bid-ask spreads, but it represents a real cost for investors. One could argue that brokers who used a PFOF model had some influence over the spreads that customers are paying, given that the broker had made a decision as to which market maker should be used for customers orders.
Taxes and other costs are outside of a broker’s control, but they should still be considered. Different countries have different rules as to how charges should be levied on the activity of investing in companies that are established in their jurisdiction. One such charge is stamp duty.
If you buy UK shares you’ll have to pay a 0.50% stamp duty tax. The UK’s PTM levy is £1.50 if you buy or sell more than £10,000 worth of UK shares in one go. If you buy Irish shares, you’ll have to pay a 1% stamp duty tax. A recent exemption was announced for Irish companies with a market capitalisation below €1 billion.
Other countries, including France, Spain and Italy, charge a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) when buying certain shares. Separately, there are charges levied by FINRA and the SEC when selling U.S. shares.
How To Set Up An Account
The account setup process is very straightforward for investment apps. You’ll be asked to verify your identity by providing a copy of your passport or driver's licence. Then you’ll be asked for some basic information about your residency, which is needed for tax purposes.
Once that’s done, you’ll be given access to your account. You won’t be able to use it until you verify the bank account you’ll use for transferring money to your investment account. This is done by sending a small sum of money from your bank account. Once the money is transferred and the bank account is verified you’ll be able to start investing.
Welcome Bonus & Refer A Friend
Many investing apps will offer a welcome bonus to new customers. This could be free shares or cash up to a certain value, fee-waivers or higher interest on uninvested cash deposits. There’s usually a Refer A Friend (RAF) feature too, which can unlock additional free shares or cash for you and a friend.
Our Investing Platform Comparison Tool allows you to easily see which apps are offering the best welcome bonuses to new customers. Try it out now.
How To Use A Trading App
Now that you’re set up with your investment account it’s time to use it. How you navigate each menu and the exact features that are available will depend on the platform, but the principles are largely the same across the board.
Depositing Money
Depositing money onto investing apps is becoming increasingly flexible. Every platform will allow you to top up using a standard bank transfer at no cost. Certain brokers have introduced free instant bank transfers using open banking technology, allowing you to send money without the hassle of account details. Deposits with card and digital wallet are sometimes available, but often come with a fee once a threshold has been reached.
Key Insight: Neobanks, like Revolut, provide you with a fee-free, in-app foreign currency exchange limit each month. If you wanted to invest in US stocks with no FX fees, you could exchange EUR to USD in-app and then transfer USD to an investing app that offers a multi-currency account.
Finding Stocks
All investing apps have a search feature which you can use to find specific stocks. The best way to find any product on an investing app is to search for it using its International Securities Identification Number (ISIN). You can find a stock's ISIN by googling it. For example, if you google ‘Apple ISIN’ you’ll see that it’s US0378331005. If you search for that code in any investing app, you’ll be shown all of the stock exchanges that Apple stock is sold on.
The reason why it’s good to get into the habit of using ISINs to search is because it ensures you’re looking at the correct product and all available listings of that product. This is more important when it comes to buying exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that all have very similar names and multiple listings, but it’s still recommended when searching for individual company stocks too.
Our ETF Comparison Tool shows you the ISINs of the most competitive index funds available to Irish investors. Try it out for yourself.
Top Tip: Know what you’re looking for before using any investing app to search for stocks or other financial assets. Do your research outside of the app and use the platform strictly for buying and selling.
Product Information
When you find the product you’re looking for, you’ll be presented with important information about it, including:
- Share Price: how much one full share costs
- Exchange: the stock exchange the shares are listed on
- Currency: the currency the shares are listed in
- Performance: how the shares have performed in the past
- Statistics: ratios and metrics used to analyse and compare different shares
If you’ve done your research correctly before investing, nothing you see here should be new information.
Buying Stocks
There are two main ways to buy stocks using an investing app:
1. Manual Investing
When you click ‘Buy’ on a stock you’ll need to decide two things:
- 1
The Order Type you want to use
- 2Whether you want to invest an exact amount of money or purchase an exact amount of shares
The order type is an instruction given to your investing platform about how you want to buy a stock and at what price. There are four main order types used by modern investing apps:
| Order Type | Instruction |
|---|---|
| Market Buy Order | Purchase the stock immediately at the best available price |
| Limit Buy Order (Recommended) | Purchase the stock at or below a specific price |
| Stop Buy Order | Purchase the stock immediately once it hits a specific price above its current price |
| Stop Limit Buy Order | Purchase the stock at or below a specific price once it hits a specific price above its current price |
A limit order is recommended for most investors as it eliminates the risk of any surprise increases in the stock price just before you make the purchase. Pending limit orders are maintained by either the stock exchange, market maker or the broker themselves depending on the order. They’re executed using a price-time-priority algorithm, where the earliest order at the best price takes priority over subsequent orders.
Key Insight: When you buy a stock you pay the ask price, which is the lowest price accepted by sellers. When you sell a stock you receive the bid price, which is the highest price offered by buyers. The difference between the two is the bid-ask spread, which is a real cost to investors. Both prices will be displayed within the stock information screen.
Certain investing apps allow you to buy fractions of shares. The benefit of this is that you don’t need to have enough money to buy one whole share to invest. For example, if one share in a company is priced at €100, and you invest €10 in that company, you’ll own 1/10th of a share. This makes investing far more accessible for the average investor, with the minimum investment often being as low as €1.
Not every app lets you buy fractional shares. For those that do, there are some potential downsides to be aware of which may or may not be applicable depending on the app:
- Restricted order types, such as market orders only
- Non-transferable between investing platforms
- Rounding errors for dividend payments
- Voting rights may not be available
- Limited investment selection
- Slower trade execution
Did You Know?: Lindt & Sprungli, the Swiss chocolatier, has a share price in excess of €100,000 per share. Without fractional share investing, it would be very difficult for an average investor to purchase shares in the company!
Once you’ve specified the order type and how much you want to invest, you’re ready to send your buy order. Remember to review your order before proceeding to make sure you’ve set everything up correctly and understand the fees and charges.
2. Automated Investing
Automated Investing, also known as AutoInvest, Savings Plans or Repeat Orders, is a feature that allows you to put your stock purchases on autopilot. Not all investing apps will support AutoInvest. Those that do will ask you to set an amount that you want to invest and the schedule that the investments should follow i.e. daily, weekly or monthly etc.
With AutoInvest, you’ll be restricted to using a market order to purchase your shares. This isn’t a bad thing, especially for index ETFs, as it encourages consistent investment in the market on an ongoing basis irrespective of price.
In certain cases, you’ll be able to set and apportion a recurring investment across multiple stocks at once. This is often called a ‘pie’ or ‘plan’. You can even use smart rebalancing technology to maintain your desired weighted exposure to each stock within the pie over time.
Key Insight: Many investing apps encourage you to use their automated investing features by waiving or reducing fees that otherwise would have been charged had you manually made the investment.
Selling Stocks
Selling stocks is much the same as buying stocks. Again, you’ll need to decide:
- 1
The Order Type you want to use
- 2Whether you want to sell an exact cash value or a specific number of shares
| Order Type | Instruction |
|---|---|
| Market Sell Order | Sell the stock immediately at the best available price |
| Limit Sell Order (Recommended) | Sell the stock at or above a specific price |
| Stop Sell Order | Sell the stock immediately once it hits a specific price below its current price |
| Stop Limit Sell Order | Sell the stock at or above a specific price once it hits a specific price below its current price |
The sales proceeds will be added to your available cash balance within the investing app. It can be withdrawn or reinvested depending on your intentions. Be aware that reinvesting a capital gain made on sale does not exempt you from paying tax. You can read more about taxes on investment gains here.
Key Insight: While fees can be waived or reduced by buying shares with AutoInvest, it’d be uncommon for the same benefit to apply when selling shares. In other words, you’re more likely to pay fees when selling shares than buying them.
Portfolio View
Every investing app will have a portfolio view where you can see the total value of your account, including both cash and investments, as well as the percentage and euro gain or loss on each position that you own. Most apps will show your total return, which accounts for stock price movements, dividends, currency fluctuations, fees, interest and taxes.
Receiving Dividends
Any dividends that you receive from owning shares will be paid into your investment account. You can choose to either reinvest those dividends or withdraw them into your bank account. Again, reinvesting dividends does not exempt you from having to pay income tax, USC and PRSI as part of your tax return. When you receive non-euro dividends into an account that doesn’t support multiple currencies, a foreign currency fee will apply.
Documents Centre
Every major investing app will have a documents centre that contains account statements, transaction statements, legal documents and confirmation of holdings among other important information. These documents are crucial for accurately declaring any investment income and gains on your tax return and paying Revenue the tax due.
Other Features
There are a wide range of other features that may or may not be available on your investing app. These include, but aren’t limited to:
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Cash Interest | Earn interest on your uninvested cash via bank deposits or money market funds |
| Cards | Spend your uninvested cash and earn cashback with a debit card |
| Social Features | Communicate with other investors and copy their investments |
| Learning Centre | Learn more about investing and the app with curated learning materials |
| Account Types | Swap between the standard investment account and other account types like ‘CFD’ or ‘Crypto’ |
| Convert | Convert euros to a range of foreign currencies in-app |
| Practice Mode | Practise investing with fake money |
Frequently Asked Questions
A ticker is a short, exchange-specific abbreviation for a stock. While a company or fund can have different tickers on different exchanges, it can only have one ISIN. That’s why it’s better to search for a stock using its ISIN instead of its ticker.
A trading halt is a temporary suspension of the buying and selling of a particular stock(s) implemented by an exchange or regulator. They are most commonly seen in periods of extreme volatility and follow a set of rules that dictate how and when they should be used.
Average Trading Volume is the average number of shares bought and sold in a particular company over a period of time. The higher the volume, the better. High trading volume indicates strong liquidity, making it easy to buy or sell at a fair price with small bid-ask spreads.
Stock exchanges are regulated marketplaces where stocks are listed, bought and sold. The exchange maintains the order book, sets trading rules and handles clearing and settlement of trades. Market makers are large financial institutions that provide liquidity to the market by acting as wholesale buyers and sellers of stocks.
Leverage on an investing app refers to the use of borrowed money to invest. It is not suitable for beginners and has the potential to amplify returns for better or worse. To see this in action, check out our leverage calculator.
Compare ETFs Side by Side
Ready to choose an ETF? Compare the most popular ETFs available to Irish investors by index, fees, dividends, and more to find the right investment for your portfolio.
