To use our services, you must first onboard as our customer. Lightyear is a financial institution, which means that we have various regulatory obligations to ensure that our customers use our services for legitimate purposes. This is why we also ask about your contact information & some other personal data, such as for example:

• Your full name, place of residence & date of birth;
• Your citizenship & tax-related details;
• Where do your funds originate from - salary, investments or something else?

If you are onboarding your business, we also ask information about your company's business activity in addition to corporate and other details! We must understand who both our business and natural person customers are.

Some of this information we also need to verify with documented proof. Please be assured that we are very careful and diligent on how we handle and store your personal information. All the details around that are laid out in our Privacy Policy.

Once you have completed your onboarding, you are welcome to deposit & start using our services. You can deposit money to us from your bank account or debit card. Please do keep in mind that you can deposit money only from your own accounts that you hold on your name. We do not allow deposits or withdrawals from/to accounts belonging to someone else.

If you have any questions, we recommend you also check out our Help Centre & specific page around deposits and withdrawals.

Using the Lightyear platform, you can:

• Invest in US, UK, and a diverse selection of EU stocks (including Spain, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and more). We are continuously expanding our platform with new instruments!
• Invest in most common ETFs that track major indexes, as well as in money-market funds (depending availability in your country)
• Hold your uninvested cash with us & accrue interest on that cash (details available on our Pricing page)
• See all kinds of information on stocks, including analyst ratings, financial performance, etc., that enable you to make informed investment decisions!

Through us you can submit market, limit and stop orders. We make investing available using our partners to bring you EU, US & UK stocks and EU ETFs. Please read more in our Order Execution Policy.

The Lightyear platform is available both on web and mobile (iOS and Android).

General

• You should be aware that all investing in financial instruments contains an element of risk.
• The value of your investments can go down as well as up, so you could get back less than you invested, or in some cases, you may lose your entire investment.
• Past performance also is not an indication of future performance for an Instrument.

Advice

Please also keep in mind that as of right now Lightyear does not offer investment advice. This means that we do not assess if our services or instruments are suitable or appropriate for you. Hence, you should always ensure that your investment decisions are in line with your risk tolerance, knowledge and experience.

Our Risk Disclosure provides an overview of what risks using investment services entail, including risks related to specific instrument types. Please read through this document carefully before starting to invest so you can make informed decisions.

The Risk Disclosures page also includes our Target Market Matrix, showcasing who each category of financial instruments are meant for - what type of risk tolerance you should have, your ability to bear losses, knowledge and experience, investor type, time horizon, objectives, etc.

Here are most important documents that govern our relationship with you and our services in general:

• Terms of Service is the agreement you agree with in order to onboard to Lightyear platform and to use our services. It stipulates rights and obligations of both you and us, Lightyear. We strongly recommend to read through the Terms of Service before using our services. Our Business Terms of Service are available separately.
• Order Execution Policy governs on how we approach to handling the orders to buy financial instruments you can submit via the Lightyear platform. With US financial instruments, Lightyear transmits your orders to our partner broker Alpaca, which means that order will eventually be executed by Alpaca or their respective partner. With EU & UK financial instrument, we execute (fulfil) the order ourselves, together with our partner broker ABN AMRO.
• Risk Disclosure provides a general description of the nature and risks related to investing and different types of financial instruments. Its very important that you understand relevant risks before you invest in any financial instruments, so we strongly recommend on reading this document before using our platform. This page also includes our Target Market Matrix.
• Privacy Policy details the personal information we collect and use, how we look after it and the circumstances in which we may share it with someone else. It also sets out your rights around how we handle your information.
• Cookie Policy details on what kinds of website cookies do we use & how long they are stored if you consent to those.
• Complaints Policy describes our complaint handling procedure and your associated rights, including your right to escalate the complaint to certain authorities.
• Conflicts of Interest Policy explains the nature of possible conflicts that may arise when providing our services and how do we mitigate such risks.
• Signup Promotion terms govern timed sign-up promotions offered by Lightyear or Lightyear's affiliate partners from time to time.
• Refer a Friend terms explains our referral scheme terms, including any seasonal or temporary referral promotions we run.
• Gift Voucher terms outlines Lightyear's gift voucher scheme.

Our website provides a comprehensive overview of our Terms of Service. Our Business Terms of Service are available separately. For ease of use, we have gathered some of the key provisions also to this page.

• Details of applicable costs and charges, which are also available on our pricing page
• How we will process transactions on your account including deposits, withdrawals and orders
• Our approach to paying interest on uninvested cash
• How we hold your money and investments to ensure your rights are protected:
  • Your money will be pooled with that of our other customers. This means that it is not possible to separately identify your client money from that of our other customers, except by using our internal books and records.
  • We may hold uninvested cash in a Qualifying Money Market Fund. This means it won’t be held in accordance with FCA client money rules. Instead it will be subject to FCA safe custody asset rules which define our obligations, including  title registration, segregation and record keeping of safe custody assets. We will only place your money in QMMFs that meet high-quality standards, as assessed by relevant rating agencies and our internal due diligence assessment.  By agreeing to our Term, you acknowledge and explicitly consent to this arrangement.
  • We will hold your investments in an omnibus account in the name of our nominee. We may deposit Instruments held by us on your behalf into an account opened with a third party (Sub Custodian). We remain responsible to you for any acts or omissions of the Sub Custodian. 
  • Please see our Help Centre for more information around asset protection.
• By agreeing to our Terms of Service, we conclude an agreement for an unlimited term. You may terminate this agreement at any time and for any reason by giving us a notice via email at support@lightyear.com. To terminate your account, you need to close any open positions you have.
• If you have a complaint you can first contact us by emailing complaints@lightyear.com. If we are unable to resolve your complaint, you may turn to the Financial Ombudsman Service (https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk)