Mintos launches commission-free ETF trading with €1 minimum

Berlin-based marketplace Mintos is adding commission-free ETF trading to its platform, lowering the entry barrier for European investors. The company announced the launch of more than 1,000 exchange-traded funds with a minimum investment of just €1. This move removes the account-size threshold that often makes small contributions disproportionately expensive on standard brokerage accounts.

Removing Barriers to Entry

Mintos charges no transaction fees on buy or sell orders and holds the funds without a custody fee, according to the company. On other brokers, a flat €1 execution fee on a €20 order creates a 5% cost before the market even moves. Mintos eliminates this entirely. Martins Sulte, CEO and co-founder of Mintos, stated that the goal was to remove every barrier between an investor and their first ETF.

The fund catalog includes over 1,000 UCITS-compliant funds from major providers like iShares, VanEck, and Vanguard. These funds must meet EU diversification and transparency rules designed for retail investors. Access to the catalog comes through a partnership with Upvest, a Berlin-based infrastructure firm. Upvest also supplies ETF and stock-trading features to other financial institutions, including CMC Markets, Santander’s Openbank, and Revolut.

Automation and Pre-Built Portfolios

Investors can select individual ETFs or use Mintos Core ETFs, a pre-built portfolio of equity and fixed-income funds. The Core option starts at €50 and rebalances automatically without charging management or custody fees, similar to robo-advisor features offered by competitors. A forthcoming feature called “Investment Plans” will allow users to automate recurring contributions on a weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or quarterly schedule. This tool will manage top-ups without further manual orders, though Mintos has not yet released a launch date for this specific function.

Moving into ETFs represents a strategic shift for Mintos, which built its business on peer-to-peer consumer loans after launching in 2015, later adding bonds, real estate and a cash management product. The ETF launch targets that existing base as much as new investors, extending Mintos’s range beyond loans and bonds.

Market Context

Scalable Capital, a German neobroker focused on recurring plans, charges a monthly subscription of €2.99 for its premium tier. Mintos is positioning itself differently by charging nothing for the trade or subscription, relying only on the costs embedded within the funds themselves. XTB introduced an ETF-based product years ago and recently redesigned it to let clients combine ETFs with individual stocks. Trade Republic, the largest platform in the segment, reports over 8 million users and more than €100 billion in assets under management.

Mintos is targeting its existing base of over 500,000 users while also courting new retail investors. Data from ETFGI shows European-listed ETFs took in a record €330 billion.