Kapitall

Author: Kaitlyn Short

Founded in late 2009, early 2010, Kapitall originally began as more of a game, letting its users build an online portfolio, place trades, and track their performance. It wasn't until the company received its license to be a broker that it began to offer real brokerage services. The entire premise of the firm's strategy was to simplify investing and provide traders with the ability to test an account and their knowledge of market theories before committing to a brokerage firm.

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The Good

• Fast trading capabilities
• Investment transparency
• Competitive nature

Kapitall's unique model sets it apart from the competition. The company tells its investors, "if you can drag and you can drop, you can trade. It's as simple as that." The brokerage firm's site lives up to this mission with its urban, game-like feel that makes investing as simple and as fun as possible. The site also offers users some helpful information about the company, funds, and performance levels. Benefits of the service include:

Fast Trading Capabilities

Kapitall is known for its unique drag and drop model where investors can rapidly place trades. On the platform, investors can virtually test their skills, risk-free, using a portfolio that has play money in it. They can also utilize the platform's other great features that let them interact with other traders, share tips, and grow their investments.

Investment Transparency

Furthermore, unlike other brokerage firms, Kapitall integrates with investors' social media accounts so they can share their investments and even challenge their friends. Users can link their accounts to Kapitall and in doing so, can choose to share their performance in investing challenges, share their earnings, and then dare their friends to outperform them. The firm also runs promotions for discounted trades on its social media account so users considering the brokerage firm should follow the company on Twitter. This social media integration, as per our research, succeeds in making investing a fun task as users often share that they enjoy trading with friends.

Competitive Nature

In addition to this unique feature, Kapitall offers demo challenges, where investors can perform mock investing challenges to get a feel of investing and the brokerage firm's services. Each month, the firm gives investors $100,000 of play money to invest in a specific area of the market. For example, one month might be the DOW 30 challenge month, where users have to invest in the top 30 companies in the DOW exchange. Winners receive anything from gift cards to Koins, which are tokens they can use in the next month's mock challenges. If this weren't enough, Kapitall also offers a mock investment platform, where investors can place trades on stocks and analyze how those trades are performing. This is perfect for novice investors who want to get their feet wet, risk-free, and learn how it'd feel to trade in their preferred area of the market. Users receive $100,000 in fake money to invest on the mock trading platform. These mock investing features, coupled with the firm's social media integration, truly distinguishes the brokerage firm from the competition.

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The Bad

• High rates
• Limited investment options
• Game-like structure

Kapitall's registration process is pretty average for brokerage firms. Once users submit their application, Kapitall takes up to two business days to review it. Then, it takes the firm about a week to set up and fund their clients' accounts. This waiting time could be improved since some of the brokerage firm's competitors outshine it on registration time, putting Kapitall in the middle of the pack. Other limitations to the platform include:

High Rates

Kapitall's fees are also a little on the high end when compared with what its competitors charge. $5.00 per trade can start to add up, especially when other brokerage firms have been known to charge $2 less than this fee. Additionally, as with most other brokerage firms, users should consider the additional fees that tend to crop up. One such fee is the $5 charge users incur when Kapitall sends any paper mail be it confirmations, statements, etc. The charge can drop to as low as $3.00 if more than 150 trades are made per quarter.

Limited Investment Options

Since the company is fairly new, the number of investment options that it offers is quite limited. Users are restricted to trading stocks, ETFs, and other exchange-traded securities. Options and bonds, for example, are off the table. This is the brokerage firm's major downside since investors can experience more variety with the firm's competitors. When we brought up this downside during a live chat with one of Kapitall's representatives, we were informed that the firm would start offering more investment choices in the near future.

Game-Like Structure

Kapitall makes investing feel like a game and while this is quite the perk for some users, others have complained that this feature detracts from the company's services. For instance, the firm's website is made to feel like a game, which makes it very difficult for some users to navigate and find the information they are looking for. We found it especially difficult to locate the brokerage firm's commission rates and customer support information. It took us an unreasonable amount of time to uncover this information, compared to how long it took us to navigate some of Kapitall's competitors' sites. Thus, the firm needs to modify their website so users can easily access the information they are searching for while enjoying the site's game-like feel.

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The Bottom Line

Kapitall strives to make trading as simple and as fun as possible and it accomplishes this by providing a game-like, investing process. The company's features are great for young, novice investors who are interested in investing but find the process tedious and boring. They can use Kapitall to engage in investing challenges, link their social media accounts with their trading accounts, and invite friends to outperform their results. In today's social media-crazed world, this distinguishing feature makes Kapitall quite the competitor in the sea of brokerage firms. Having said all of this, the company could still improve in several other areas. One main area is their limited investment choices. In order to strategically grow their customer base, the firm will need to expand their investment options to at least include options and bonds. Additionally, the company could adjust its pricing structure to more competitively reflect the discounted fees that are out there. But, at the end of the day, Kapitall has a fresh take on investing, which definitely distinguishes the firm from the competition and allows investors to have fun when placing trades.