Fintech startup Lightyear, which launched in the UK in 2021 and in 19 European countries in July 2022, has expanded its product suite with the launch of Price Alerts, a highly requested feature by customers.

Lightyear, founded by early Wise alumni Martin Sokk and Mihkel Aamer, was born from personal frustrations with investing in Europe. Hidden fees, confusing user experiences and lack of access to international markets have been very much the norm. Lightyear is looking to become one of the only investment apps to unlock the European market, and took a huge step towards that on July 14, when it launched across all the Eurozone countries in one move.

Lightyear combines multi-currency accounts with unlimited access to global markets so customers can invest freely without hidden fees. The recent European expansion enables customers from 19 Eurozone countries to access thousands of US and European stocks in addition to Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Countries part of this first European rollout include Ireland, the Baltics and most of Western Europe such as Spain, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands and France. 

Since launching in the UK in September 2021, Lightyear has expanded its product suite with new customer-requested features like limit orders and auto conversions, as well as tripled its instrument pool to over 3,000. Today, Lightyear launches another user request: Price Alerts. Price Alerts allow you to set a price target for any stock or ETF in our instrument pool, as to not miss out on buying or selling opportunities.

To help fuel their next phase of growth across more European markets, Lightyear recently raised a $25M Series A, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Joining Lightspeed in the new investment round was Virgin Group – Richard Branson’s investment arm, and an organisation that champions driving positive change through new technologies. The company’s seed investors, Mosaic Ventures, Taavet+Sten and Metaplanet also took part in the round alongside a number of new and existing angel investors. 

Mihkel Aamer, CTO and co-founder at Lightyear, says: “Since launching last year, we’ve prioritised listening to customers and iterating our product based on their wants and needs. Less than two weeks after expanding Lightyear to 19 new countries, we’re excited to add Price Alerts, another highly requested feature, to our product. We’ve seen that many Lightyear users have a price in mind when buying or selling shares. This new feature allows customers to get alerted on price movements of instruments they’re interested in and promptly take desired actions from their mobile phones.”

Flora Somogyi, User Research Lead at Lightyear adds: “Listening to our customers and acting quickly on their feedback is a huge part of our strategy now that we’re focused on helping customers in 20 different countries to invest. Whenever we launch a new product we spend a great deal of time talking to customers to make sure we’re building the products and features they need. One of the key themes we’ve seen in research so far is our customer’s need to stay on top of what’s happening in their portfolio. Features like price alerts, combined with Lightning Updates for live news, are important to them.”