Robinhood Is Giving College Students Who Open Accounts $15 to Start Trading
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Robinhood has its sight set on an even younger demographic of investors.
Starting Wednesday and lasting until October 24, the trading app will give college students $15 to trade if they sign up for brokerage accounts using their .edu school email addresses. Students opening Robinhood accounts will also automatically be entered into a contest awarding $20,000 for tuition, which five students will win, for a total of $100,000 in prizes. The company will be touring community colleges and historically Black colleges and universities this fall as part of the marketing campaign to attract students as well.
Robinhood is no stranger to young users. The app is popular among Gen Z and millennials who appreciate the ability to trade stocks on their phones at lightning speed with no fees, and possibly also to explore investing in cryptocurrency and options trading. But Robinhood has been criticized for opening inexperienced investors up to the possibility of taking on high risk, and even encouraging them to do so by making investing akin to a game. Earlier this year, the company settled a wrongful-death lawsuit from a family of a 20-year-old college student who took his own life after, his family believes, mistakenly thinking the app was saying he owed $730,000.
