Funding your account and making your first investment

With verification done, the next steps are adding money to your account and choosing your first product. Here is how that works.

Orchard4 August 2026

Getting started with Orchard · Part 2 of 3

Summary

With verification done, the next steps are adding money to your account and choosing your first product. Here is how that works.

This is Part 2 of a short series on getting started with Orchard. Part 1 covered creating your account and completing verification. With that done, the next steps are funding your account and choosing where to put your first investment.

Step 1: Fund your account

Before you can invest in anything, you need money in your Orchard balance. This works the same way as moving money into any other financial account: you transfer funds in, and they sit as an available balance until you choose to invest them. Nothing is invested automatically. Funding your account and investing are two separate, deliberate steps.

Step 2: Compare products before choosing

Once you have a balance, resist the urge to pick the first product you see. Use the investment simulator to enter an amount and a term, and compare how different products play out. This does not predict returns with certainty, but it gives you a concrete way to compare options side by side instead of guessing.

It is also worth reading the actual detail page for whichever product you are considering, whether that is a treasury bill, a fixed deposit, or an alternative like real estate. The summary gives you the shape of it. The detail page gives you the specific mechanics: term length, how the return is structured, and what regulatory basis it operates under.

Step 3: Make your first investment

Your first investment does not need to be large. This is the entire point of fractional access: you can start with an amount that makes sense for you, rather than being forced to meet a minimum built for institutional investors. Once you select a product and confirm an amount, that portion of your balance moves into the investment, and you will be able to see it reflected in your account.

A reasonable way to approach your first one

If you are unsure where to start, a short-term, fixed-income product like a treasury bill is a common starting point, precisely because the terms are simple and the outcome is predictable. That is not a recommendation specific to your situation, since we do not provide investment advice, but it explains why many people choose to start there before exploring alternatives with a different risk and return profile.

Once your first investment is in place, the next part of this series covers how to track and manage what you have invested over time.

Key takeaways

Funding your account moves money from your bank into your Orchard balance before it can be invested.
Use the investment simulator to compare products before committing any money.
Read the product detail page for the specific instrument, not just the summary, before you invest.
Your first investment does not need to be large. Fractional access is the point.