Stockpile Reviews | Will Stockpile Last? Can It Revolutionize Wall Street?

Stockpile Reviews | Will Stockpile Last? Can It Revolutionize Wall Street?

Stockpile is revolutionizing the 21^st century, where the traditional act of going through a stock broker to invest your money can now be eliminated.

Stockpile has streamlined this process, enabling investors to purchase stock on their own, either through their website or even through prepaid cards at a grocery store. With Stockpile, giving stock as a gift has never been easier.

Source: Stockpile

Featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Consumer Reports, and even a segment on CNBC, services offered through Stockpile are getting massive amounts of coverage.

With their recent acquisition of Sparkgift, a competing stock gifting company, Stockpile continues to make headlines. Still, the act of purchasing stock online or giving stock as a gift has consumers feeling wary. This Stockpile review will attempt to address the following top consumer concerns:

What is Stockpile, and how does it work?
How can someone buy stock as a gift?
Is giving stock as a gift reliable?
What do Stockpile reviews say about the company?
Will Stockpile last?

By providing a thorough analysis of Stockpile, their process, and current Stockpile.com reviews, we hope to address whether or not Stockpile will last, and ultimately, whether or not it can revolutionize Wall Street.

What Is Stockpile, and How Does It Work?

Stockpile originally began as a California-based startup company, called Stockpile Inc. Bringing stock trading to the general public was an idea formed by Avi Lele, founder of Stockpile Inc. and Stockpile. One Christmas, while trying to decide what to give to his nieces and nephews, Lele thought of giving stock as a gift.

The existing process, however, was far too complicated. Giving stock as a gift to his nieces and nephews became too much of a burden. Frustrated with the process, Lele purchased toys instead.

It bothered Lele that he could not buy stock as a gift for his family. Lele felt that giving stock as a gift would be an important investment for their financial future. Stockpile Inc. was born, and after widespread success, the company Stockpile emerged.

Avi Lele, Stockpile cofounder and CEO. Photo courtesy of Business Insider

Stockpile acts as a bridge between investor and stocks. The company is fully licensed as a stock broker and stock dealer, but their user-friendly process eliminates the need for consultation or hefty brokerage fees. Instead of trusting a stock broker to purchase your shares, that power is transferred solely to the customer.

Lele describes his company as “taking something complicated and expensive and making it accessible to everyone.” His belief that everyone should have affordable access to stocks began with believing in the right to buy stock as a gift.

How Can Someone Buy Stock as a Gift?

The process of giving stock as a gift is actually quite straightforward. Thanks to the recent acquisition of competing company Sparkgift, Stockpile can offer additional options for gifting stock. For someone looking to buy stock as a gift, there are two options:

E-gift, purchased online through Stockpile

If you want to buy stock as a gift through the Stockpile website, an e-gift is a great option. After choosing between preset amounts (or making your own), your gift is sent via email. Stockpile adds a gifting fee of $1.99 to any online purchase. Redeeming an e-gift involves simply visiting the Stockpile website and creating a free account.

Physical gift card, purchased at a retail location

If you prefer a physical gift card, you have two options when giving stock as a gift. Physical gift cards can be ordered online, or purchased in-store.

Source: Stockpile

Gift cards have set values of $25, $50, or $100. Stockpile provides gift cards preset for some stocks, like Facebook Inc., Apple, Inc., and Coca-Cola Co. Other giftcards are undetermined stocks, so giving stock as a gift leaves the receiver with their own options.

By entering your city, state, or zip code, Stockpile will connect you to a store in your area. In North Carolina, there are 12 locations that sell Stockpile gift cards, split between Kmart and Office Depot retail stores. In the home state of Stockpile Inc., California, customers can buy stock as a gift in 49 physical locations.

In contrast, Florida has a whopping 54 retail stores in which Stockpile gift cards promote giving stock as a gift.

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Is Giving Stock as a Gift Reliable?

The benefits of giving stock as a gift through Stockpile, whether through an e-gift or a physical gift card, seem to point to reliability. No matter which gifting method you choose, giving stock as a gift through Stockpile comes with the following guarantees:

A gifted stock can be exchanged for stock in a different company.

This places less pressure on the giver to know what sort of stock the recipient is interested in. To prevent stress and complication, Stockpile makes giving stock as a gift much easier by allowing the recipient to have final say over their stock.

A Stockpile gift card or e-gift can be redeemed for a retailer gift card.

Stockpile reviews don’t have anything yet to say about this process, and Stockpile itself is vague. Replacement gift cards could either be for specific retailers or for a generic gift card, usable at any retail location. Still, either option might be preferable to a gift recipient who doesn’t want stock.

The $1.99 gifting fee acts as a trading commission, so the gift recipient won’t need to pay any extra fees.

Not only does this make the process of giving stock as a gift a less complicated process, it also makes receiving stock easy. Giving stock as a gift should not weigh the recipient down with extra fees. Stockpile avoids this dilemma by adding a small gifting fee.

Though it may seem like just another fee, this gifting fee is important. A trading commission fee is necessary for all stock actions.This stems from a transaction fee imposed on stocks by the SEC.

Overall, it seems as if Stockpile has taken great care to ensure customer satisfaction through the purchasing process. With multiple ways to purchase stock, and added options for the gift recipient, giving stock as a gift does seem to be a reliable purchase.

What Do Stockpile Reviews Say About the Company?

Looking through Stockpile reviews can offer a lot of insight toward whether or not the offered services are worth investing in. The company began opening the stock purchasing services to the public in October of 2015, so the process is still relatively new. With less than a year of service underneath their belt, the ability to buy stock as a gift is still a very new phenomenon.

Analyzing Stockpile reviews is somewhat different than analyzing typical product or service reviews. Stockpile.com reviews tend to fall into two categories:

Customer testimonials or expert predictions on perceived success
Critiques from finance or stock experts on perceived flaws

Stockpile Reviews: Customer Testimonials and Expert Predictions

On the whole, Stockpile reviews from this category have been fairly positive. Many Stockpile reviews praise the company for opening up accessibility to a complicated and widely avoided industry. Others admire Stockpile’s aspiration to move into transferring credit card or airline loyalty points into stocks.

An article in Forbes reviewed Stockpile, saying that this process could revolutionize the way in which we view stocks. In fact, the Forbes author, Shep Hyken, posited that a giftcard system could convince new segments of consumers to join the stock trading market.

One of the Stockpile.com reviews tells the personal story of a user who bought stock for her 2-year old nephew. She calls the process “a wonderful nest egg to have for college or whenever he chooses to cash it in later on.” Among perhaps the more high-profile reviews, actor Ashton Kutcher says that “Stockpile has nailed it,” describing their service as a “drop dead easy user experience and affordable to all.”

Stockpile offers their own source for customer reviews, with a constant running tally of unsolicited Stockpile.com reviews from satisfied customers. These reviews are full of optimism, gratitude, and praise both for the stock purchasing service, as well as for their quality of customer service.

Stockpile Reviews: Critiques From Finance and Stock Experts

As Stockpile has barely a year of widespread operation, firsthand Stockpile.com reviews are difficult to come by. The company is still too new to accurately assess customer satisfaction and success — or, perhaps there is simply not yet an outlet for critique.

An article posted by online financial review source, Seeking Alpha, does have some critiques regarding the process of purchasing and giving stock as a gift through gift cards. This particular article makes the following arguments against Stockpile:

Purchasing a gift card in-store ends up costing much more money than purchasing online, accounting for about a 15-20% commission for Stockpile.
Many people don’t understand stocks well enough to maneuver Stockpile.
With only 100 available stocks, the list for buying and trading is limited.

While these are fair critiques, Stockpile still operates under a much more affordable process. Even a critique acknowledges that the $0.99 cent trading fee is only a fraction of what typical stock brokers charge.

It may take some additional time for Stockpile to get the necessary exposure to start rolling in customer Stockpile.com reviews. For now, the existing Stockpile reviews are very positive. With only one negative review, it is safe to say that Stockpile.com reviews as shed a lot of positive light on the company.

Will Stockpile Last?

With Stockpile opening up trading and selling of stocks through an easily accessed online system, they have certainly made huge waves. By adding stock giftcards, both online and in retail stores, they may have completely revolutionized the stock market.

Giving stock as a gift is now possible, and incredibly accessible for anyone with a credit card. Now that consumers can begin giving stock as a gift, owning a share of a company is now readily available for anyone. All it takes is a simple click of a button for an e-gift, or a scanner at the grocery store checkout.

The question of whether Stockpile will last skews toward the positive. After all, the gift card industry is an incredibly strong one. In 2014, Americans spent a total of $93.9 billion on gift cards. Just one year later, that number grew to a staggering $125 billion. Gift cards are certainly a good business to be in. Given that, it seems that Stockpile has hit a personal gold mine.

Just a few months after hitting shelves in December 2015, retail stores quadrupled their orders for stock gift cards through Stockpile. This is even more impressive when you consider that most original orders started at 1 million.

Even better, Stockpile has an amazing market of available customers. In 2014, a study conducted by the Federal Reserve Survey of Customer Finanace revealed that a mere 14% of Americans owned stocks directly. That leaves a vast, untapped market of people who perhaps have not invested in stocks because they haven’t been readily available.

Given their successful growth from a startup into an innovative company, Stockpile certainly seems like it will last. With hardly a bad review to be found, it is difficult to find evidence otherwise. Adding multiple ways to purchase and trade stocks helps solidify their standing, and enabling customers to start giving stock as a gift is what will ultimately keep Stockpile successful.

Conclusion

Can Stockpile revolutionize Wall Street? Photo courtesy of: Investopedia

Our review has taken great care to consider Stockpile as a whole. We have discussed how to buy stock as a gift, and whether giving stock as a gift through Stockpile is a reliable process. We have looked at Stockpile.com reviews in order to determine if the overall Stockpile reviews were positive or negative.

The answers to these queries appear to be resoundingly positive. Stockpile is bridging the gap between investor and stock broker by letting every day people have control over their stock investments. Not only does Stockpile offer a safe process, but their services are also extremely affordable.

Wall Street might want to keep an eye out, because by all appearances, Stockpile is ready and willing to revolutionize the process of buying and selling stocks.

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