Choosing the right broker in Germany

💰 Everyday Islamic Finance Savings & Investing
#1

As Salam Aleykum,

I want to choose the right broker platform for investing purpose in Germany.
What is your take on etoro.com ? I see many options on etoro to invest in crypto, commodities, stocks, etf and indexes.

Right now I am yet to start there, so thought to check with Zoya community.

Best Regards,
Shajee

#2

Salam aleykoum Sharjee,

In my humble opinion, from an economic point of view, they have extremely high fees. And from a shariah point of view I contacted them and they told me that they plan to lend the securities of their users on the markets. Personaly I am not comfortable with it.

I AM NOT A SCHOLAR NOR A ZOYA ADMINISTRATOR.

#3

Waleykum as Salam Yassir,

Thank you for the response. What does it mean ‘to lend securities of users on markets’ ?

Regards,
Shajee

#4

Etoro will lend you shares to shortest. And based on my understanding, it’s not shariah compliant.

Allah o a3lam.

#5

I would also recommend looking for more info on eToro before deciding to invest within this platform, e.g. check Wikipedia:

#6

Thank you for the pointer. I also saw that, personally I do not want to got with this company. Maybe they are doing it right, Allah knows best. Finally I have decided to go with Scalable Capital

#7

Have you considered Degiro? We recently launched an integration that allows you to connect your Degiro account to Zoya to seamlessly track your portfolio for shariah compliance.

#8

Salam aleykoum brothers,

@Shajee I think that Degiro involve you in a riba transaction in case of negative interest rates. Here is the link for more detail : Negative interest rates and compensation for Cash Account | DEGIRO

Otherwise there is Trade republic in Germany. They do not lend your shares, nothing happens in case of negative interest, and even if normally they pay you 2% interest on your amount of cash deposited in their account, you can contact them before you open your account to cancel this remuneration of 2%.

@saad Do you plan to do any integration with trade republic ? Do you have some information about when Zoya invest will be launch ?

#9

@Yassir Thanks for the reference. Finally I went with Scalable Capital. They do not give any interest on the cash deposit. It starts only with Extra Premium account, which obviously I do not require.

However, they charge 0.99 cents for each order of value less than 250 Euro. What are the charges for Trade Republic?

#10

1€ per transaction. 0 charges if it’s a planned investment : same amount each period (quarter, month, week etc…)

#11

Thanks for the info. What about the securities account do they have their own? For eg. Scalable is giving a seamless integration with Bader bank.

#12

Honestly I do not know. I think that they have an integration with a bank in Germany, but I don’t know which one.

Could you please search this information and revert to us ? It can be useful.

#13

As Salam Aleykum

For those in Germany, I had researched on 2 options, Trade Republic and Scalable Capital.
After doing my research, I chose Scalable Capital. Now both are similar in terms of their cost etc. Below are major difference:

  1. Scalable Capital is backed by a Bank i.e. Baader Bank, Trade Republic has its own FI (backed by other banks)
  2. Scalable Capital has both free and paid account, while Trade Republic has only free account
  3. Scalable Capital (Paid Account) has 0 order fee for more than 250 Euro of trade, while Trade Republic always charges 1 Euro. Free Account from SC also always charges 0.99 Euro
  4. Scalable Capital does not give interest on your deposit (on free and prime), you need to take extra-prime for getting interest. This is good as we don’t want the overhead. Trade Republic always gives interest, however you might send them an email and ask not to give you any interest.

Here you can read more differences

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