Robinhood says web platform operational after service disruption

The company, however, has been criticized for not doing enough to moderate excesses after one of its customers took his life believing he had lost more than $730,000 using the free trading app. Robinhood is also being investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Regulatory Authority over the handling of an outage in March, Bloomberg News reported on Monday.

Robinhood Markets Inc, the fintech startup credited with helping popularize trading among millennials, said on Tuesday it had restored services on its web platform following a brief "service disruption" earlier in the day.

"This morning, some of our customers may have experienced a brief service disruption on our web platform. We were able to quickly resolve the issue and our systems are currently operational," a Robinhood spokeswoman said in an email. Robinhood has been at the center of a recent upsurge in day trading by retail investors, who have been homebound due to coronavirus lockdowns. The higher-than-usual traffic on its app has led to multiple outages since early March.

Robinhood is one of the most popular and well-funded fintech startups in the United States, having been valued at $11.2 billion in its most recent funding round. The company, however, has been criticized for not doing enough to moderate excesses after one of its customers took his life believing he had lost more than $730,000 using the free trading app.

Robinhood is also being investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Regulatory Authority over the handling of an outage in March, Bloomberg News reported on Monday. Investigators are also focusing on the company's lack of customer response, the report added.