December 8, 2025
Salt Bank, the "first Romanian neobank" (which is really just Banca Transilvania in a hoodie), has officially launched its investment platform. They want you to buy fractional shares and ETFs directly from their app. It looks sleek, it’s instant, and it’s powered by a German fintech called Upvest.
And that’s exactly the problem.
This isn't a brokerage account. It's an API wrapper. When you buy "Apple" stock through Salt, you aren't dealing with the market directly. You are sending a request to Salt, who sends a request to Upvest, who holds the securities in an omnibus account (a big bucket) in Germany. You don't own the share in your name; you own a claim against a claim.
They call it "democratizing investments." I call it gamification. By reducing investing to a few taps next to your grocery transactions, they encourage impulse buying rather than long-term holding. Plus, adding layers of middlemen always introduces new points of failure. If Upvest goes down, or Salt's API integration breaks, good luck accessing your portfolio.
If you want to invest, open a real brokerage account (like IBKR or even XTB). Stop letting banks treat your life savings like a microtransaction in a mobile game. Convenience is the enemy of ownership.