More expensive fees than IBKR, they are partnered with IBKR right now so it's basically IBKR + extra fees (due to the convenience). Rakuten is still cheaper than most Malaysian brokers like banks etc. If you open an IBKR account, you also need to open an SG account to transfer funds over. It's more of a pain in the ass, but you get cheaper fees that way. Rakuten is very easy, you bank in to it, you withdraw from it. The upsides are that is is very easy to open/deposit/withdraw and deals all in RM or USD (no SGD involved). Negatives are the more expensive fees and also no USD account (yet). All money is stored in RM. If you are buying growth stocks with no dividends, this doesn't matter so much but if you plan to compound your dividend stocks, its very poor value because your USD dividend is converted to RM then you have to convert from RM back to USD to purchase more stocks. In general I don't touch US dividend stocks so I don't really mind and I use Rakuten for the convenience.

This post has been edited by ivanpei: Jun 29 2022, 01:24 PM