eToro, the social investing platform, has announced today that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, has recently approved its application of membership.  With the Wall street independent regulator giving the SEC-registered firm a license, eToro will now be capable of buying and selling various regulated securities on the behalf of others.

Entering New Arenas

As a newly-dubbed member of FINRA, eToro will now be capable of extending its commission-free stocks offering to the various clients it hands in the US. It’s been almost 13 months since eToro had introduced this very service with the UK and European markets, and is now officially available within more than 100 countries across the globe.

However, it should be noted that eToro is not without risk with this new expansion plan. By entering the competitive US marketplace with a commission-free offering, it stands in direct competition with Robinhood, an already established exchange with zero brokerage. As it stands now, Robinhood has managed to reach 13 million users across the US, and those users aren’t likely to jump on the eToro bandwagon.

The Mandatory Good Word

Guy Hirsch stands as the Managing Director for eToro’s US arm, and gave a comment about the matter at large. He explained that eToro now being a FINRA member broker-dealer. Alongside being registered with the SEC, the group is eager to provide its US customers a new range of services. The global fintech leader will now be capable of delivering multi-asset free social trading to the US at large. As one would imagine, Hirsch explained that eToro views the US markets as strategic to their holdings at large.

Hirsch gave a quick overview of eToro as a whole, as well. He boldly stated that the brokerage holds more than 13 million registered users across the globe, with a trading volume of $600 billion within the first half of 2020. Hirsch promised a continued increase in eToro’s overall focus within the US market, with aims to launching the full product come next year.

A New Place To Expand

eToro had already managed to secure a soft launch within the US, at least in regard to its crypto services back in 2019. However, the exchange was intimately aware of the regulatory pressures when it came to expanding into the US’ mainstream asset classes, something they considered even with a massive amount of experience in that space.

The US platform had the support of crypto assets at it launched, but eToro had already made plans to add further asset classes in the following 12 months. In the fully-established markets of eToro, users are capable of trading over 1,500 different forms of asset classes, ranging from stocks, to crypto, to forex, commodities, and bonds, and much more.