EasyEquities turns nine – with R42 billion customer equity

South Africa’s most popular share trading platform, EasyEquities, is celebrating its ninth birthday with 850,000 active investors and customer equity of R42 billion.

EasyEquities was created in 2014 by Charles Savage and is a product of First World Trader, which forms part of the JSE-listed Purple Group.

It makes it easy to invest in equities and gives millions of South Africans access to the financial markets. Users can buy local and international stocks.

EasyEquities’ biggest selling point is its patented fractional share rights (FSR) model, which allows investors to buy and sell small portions of equities traded on stock exchanges.

FSR means everyone can invest cheaply and easily and allows a R100 investor to create the same portfolio as an R1 million investor.

EasyEquities initially started as a single rand platform but has grown to offer a range of investment options to users.

It now offers local shares, managed products like unit trusts, USD, AUD, EUR and GBP wallets, ETFs, cryptocurrencies, property, and retirement products.

The platform has signed partnerships with Satrix, Capitec, Discovery, and Telkom to extend its reach and introduce investing to more South Africans.

EasyEquities now boasts over 850,000 active investors and is well on its way to reaching the one million mark.

It has handled more than R 77 billion in notional transaction value, which helped it to grow revenue from R7.8 million in 2016 to R123 million in 2023.

The platform’s customer equity increased from R1.08 billion in 2015 to R42 billion in 2023. The average customer equity is currently R36,000.

To support the growing number of investors, EasyEquities has increased its staff from 73 employees in 2016 to over 200 employees today.