Lightyear

Lightyear Broker Overview

Lightyear is a European investment app rather than a forex or CFD broker. Clients in the European Economic Area are served by Lightyear Europe AS, an Estonian public limited company based in Tallinn, and clients in the United Kingdom by Lightyear U.K. Ltd in London. The business was founded in October 2020 by Martin Sokk and Mihkel Aamer, both early employees of Wise, and it gives customers access to more than 6,000 stocks, ETFs, exchange traded commodities, money market funds, Baltic bonds and a short list of crypto-assets through its own web and mobile platform. Accounts are available to residents of 26 European markets, including the United Kingdom, and everything is bought with the customer's own cash: there is no margin, no leverage and no short selling.

Lightyear Regulation and License

Lightyear operates through two authorised firms, and both authorisations are recorded on the regulators' own registers. Lightyear Europe AS is authorised as an investment firm by the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority, Finantsinspektsioon, under activity licence 4.1-1/31, effective from 3 March 2022 and entered on the authority's register of licenced investment firms in Estonia. Lightyear U.K. Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under firm reference number 987226, authorised since 30 September 2024 and carried on the Financial Services Register. Lightyear Europe AS also holds Estonian licence 4.1-1/147, an authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider under the EU markets-in-crypto-assets rules, effective 17 November 2025, and licence 4.1-1/32, which since 4 March 2024 extends its investment-firm permissions; both are confirmed as active. Neither securities permission extends to leveraged foreign exchange or contracts for difference, which matches what Lightyear sells.

Is Lightyear Regulated?

Yes. Both operating companies hold permissions from statutory regulators and both appear on those regulators' own registers: Finantsinspektsioon carries Lightyear Europe AS as a licenced Estonian investment firm, and the Financial Conduct Authority carries Lightyear U.K. Ltd as an authorised firm. Both licence numbers and both company numbers appear in the footer of Lightyear's own site, so readers can check them against the registers directly. The crypto-asset permission is the one regulatory claim here that rests on Lightyear's own statement alone.

Lightyear Europe AS

Lightyear Europe AS is the Estonian company behind the European service, registered under company number 16235024 with a registered office at Volta tn 1, Tallinn 10412. It was entered in the Estonian register on 21 May 2021, has share capital of 3,500,000 EUR, and is wholly owned by Lightyear Financial Ltd of London, company number 12925823, which is also the entity named in the site copyright line. The United Kingdom service sits with Lightyear U.K. Ltd, company number 14367910, incorporated on 21 September 2022, and United Kingdom securities are generally held in the name of a group nominee company, Lightyear Nominees Ltd, for which Lightyear publishes no registration details. The named companies are active and share the two disclosed offices in Tallinn and London.

Lightyear License 4.1-1/31

Activity licence 4.1-1/31 is held by Lightyear Europe AS and is the permission under which European clients are served. The register entry covers the reception and transmission of orders in securities, the execution of orders for clients, the safekeeping and administration of securities, and foreign exchange services connected with investment services, and it carries no expiry date. Client assets held under it are covered by the Estonian Investor Protection Sectoral Fund up to 20,000 EUR, which Lightyear states applies to every account regardless of the holder's country of residence, with a personal account and a business account covered separately. The permission does not extend to leveraged currency trading.

Is Lightyear Safe?

Lightyear carries the structural protections a regulated European investment firm is required to carry, and the ceilings matter more than the general reassurance. Client money and instruments are held separately from company funds, with uninvested cash placed with regulated credit institutions and AAA-rated BlackRock and J.P. Morgan money market funds, and invested assets held with authorised custodians. US securities sit with the execution partner Alpaca and are protected up to 500,000 USD by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. Clients of Lightyear U.K. Ltd are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme: its investment protection covers up to 85,000 GBP per person, per firm, for eligible claims if client assets were short, while cash at UK partner banks falls under FSCS deposit protection, which does not extend to cash placed in Qualifying Money Market Funds. Two limits deserve attention before funding an account. The Estonian 20,000 EUR ceiling is well below the size many portfolios reach, and crypto-assets are excluded from the Estonian fund and from every other EU compensation scheme. Regulation and segregation protect against firm failure and misuse, not against investment losses.

Lightyear Account Types

There is no tiering by deposit size and no premium tier to buy into. The Personal account is a multi-currency investment account holding euros, pounds and dollars with access to the full instrument range, and the Business account serves companies with no minimum or maximum deposit criteria, automatic W-8BEN-E filing and an optional LEI registration. Tax wrappers sit on top of the same service: the Estonian Investeerimiskonto, the Hungarian TBSZ, which takes investment return tax to zero after five years, and for United Kingdom clients a Stocks and Shares ISA and a Cash ISA inside the 20,000 GBP annual allowance, both flexible, alongside a General Investment Account. Pricing is not identical across them: the United Kingdom accounts are commission-free with a 0.1 percent currency conversion fee, while the European accounts carry the per-order commissions below and a 0.35 percent conversion fee.

Lightyear Spreads, Commissions and Fees

Lightyear charges a per-order commission rather than a dealing spread, and there is no account fee and no custody fee. On the European service, US shares cost 0.10 percent per order with a 0.10 USD minimum and a 1 USD cap, UK shares cost 1 GBP per order, and EUR-denominated stocks, bonds, ETNs and ETCs cost 1 EUR per order. Other European stocks cost 0.10 percent with local minimums of 200 HUF, 1.5 CHF, 10 DKK, 10 SEK, 10 NOK and 5 PLN, and Baltic stocks are free for the first three orders each month and 1 EUR after that. ETFs carry no execution or custody fee, although fund manager charges still apply. Crypto-asset orders cost 0.45 percent. Currency conversion costs 0.35 percent at the live interbank rate on the European service and 0.1 percent on the United Kingdom accounts, money market funds carry an annual Lightyear fee of 0.15 percent or less, and a business LEI registration costs 48 EUR plus VAT for a year.

Lightyear Leverage

None is offered. Lightyear is a cash-only platform, short selling is not permitted, and no margin or leveraged product appears in its range, so a customer cannot lose more than the money they put in.

Lightyear Trading Platforms

Lightyear runs its own platform rather than licensing a third-party one, so MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 and cTrader are not available. The same account is reached through a web app and through native iOS and Android apps. Market, limit, stop and scheduled repeat orders are supported, fractional shares are available across much of the range, and the app adds automated recurring investing plans, ready-made plans built around BlackRock and Vanguard funds, and generated market summaries. Orders in US instruments are transmitted to Alpaca, European and United Kingdom orders are executed by the Lightyear entities themselves, and crypto-asset orders are transmitted to Kraken.

Lightyear Deposits and Withdrawals

Funding is by bank transfer or debit card, and only from an account or card in the customer's own name. Bank transfers are free in both directions: SEPA Instant arrives within minutes and a regular SEPA transfer within two business days, UK Faster Payments arrive within minutes with CHAPS in one business day and BACS in three, US ACH takes one to two business days, and a local HUF transfer inside Hungary takes one business day. Debit card, Apple Pay and Google Pay deposits are instant but cost 0.6 percent, are limited to personal 3D Secure cards issued in the country on the account, and cannot be used for withdrawals, so a bank transfer has to be set up before money can be taken out. Receiving a USD wire costs a fixed 6.11 USD on the European service and up to 8.50 USD per payment on the UK service, SWIFT transfers take three to five business days and are not accepted for EUR deposits, and USD or SWIFT withdrawals are released only to an account in the client's own name once a bank statement has been supplied.

Lightyear Support

Support is by email at support@lightyear.com and through the help and support section of the app and the Help Centre, with complaints handled separately at complaints@lightyear.com. Lightyear publishes no telephone number, no live chat and no opening hours, and gives no general response-time commitment, though its complaints policy commits to acknowledging a complaint within 24 hours or the next business day and issuing a final response by the end of 15 days. Service is offered in ten languages, and a public service status page is maintained at status.lightyear.com.

Lightyear Pros and Cons

• Two authorised operating companies, both named openly with their licence and company numbers, and both authorisations recorded on the regulators' own registers.
• Low and legible costs: free ETF dealing, a 1 USD cap on US share orders, commission-free United Kingdom accounts, and no account or custody fee.
• Client assets segregated and held with authorised custodians, with 20,000 EUR of Estonian investor protection, 500,000 USD of SIPC cover on US securities and FSCS investment protection up to 85,000 GBP for UK clients.
• The 20,000 EUR European ceiling is modest for a larger portfolio, and crypto-assets fall outside it entirely.
• No leverage, no short selling and no forex or CFD access, which rules the platform out for anyone looking for those products.
• No telephone support, no live chat and no published support hours, so every issue goes through email or the in-app form.

Lightyear Review and Assessment

Lightyear is a low-cost European investment platform with a clearly disclosed corporate structure and two statutory regulators behind it, and the detail holds up: the companies the site names are the companies the licence records name, at the addresses the site gives. Anyone arriving expecting a forex or CFD broker is in the wrong place, because Lightyear sells cash equities, funds and crypto-assets and says so in its own terms. The most important thing to weigh before funding an account is the size of the protection behind it. The Estonian compensation ceiling of 20,000 EUR, and the exclusion of crypto-assets from it, are both stated by Lightyear itself and are worth reading before a large balance is built up.