Former The Royal Mint Executives Debut Fintech Targeting Physical Gold Market
Two former senior executives from The Royal Mint have launched Goldwise, a UK-based fintech on a mission to drag physical gold investment into the digital age, and they are starting from as little as £5.
Jatin Patel and Gareth Tucker, who previously built and scaled The Royal Mint’s precious metals division and steered the launch of a gold-backed exchange-traded product, founded Goldwise after identifying a gap that has frustrated investors for years. Despite the surging demand for physical precious metals, the routes to buying them have barely changed, clunky bullion dealer websites, steep minimum purchases, high markups, and zero integration with modern wealth platforms.
The new platform changes that through a mobile app that lets users buy, manage, and sell fractional amounts of physical gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. Trades can start from 0.001 troy ounces, and the platform supports 24/7 trading, conditional orders, and real-time portfolio tracking, features investors in stocks and crypto have enjoyed for years, but which have been largely absent from physical gold investment.
At the centre of the operation is what the company calls the “Goldwise Engine,” a proprietary infrastructure that handles everything from customer onboarding to institutional pricing, payments, allocation, custody, and recordkeeping. The engine connects directly to the global precious metals ecosystem, working exclusively with London Bullion Market Association (LBMA)-approved bars. Customer holdings are reconciled daily and stored in insured, audited vaults in London, Zurich, and New York, the same facilities used by major metals banks and brokers — while customer funds are held under FCA-regulated e-money arrangements.
“Investing in most asset classes has become simple, digital and accessible, but physical precious metals have been left behind,” said Tucker. “Customers still face outdated buying experiences, marked-up pricing and limited trading functionality. Goldwise was built to change that.”
The company is pursuing two routes to market. The first is a direct-to-consumer iOS app, with Android and web versions coming soon. The second, Goldwise Connect, is a precious-metals-as-a-service offering that lets wealth platforms and financial institutions embed physical gold investment capabilities into their own products. Patel noted that one of the sector’s biggest pain points has been that physical precious metals are rarely available on existing banking or wealth platforms at fees and quantities everyday savers can actually afford.
Looking ahead, Goldwise plans to expand into Europe, the US, and Asia over the next 18 months. The roadmap also includes whole coin and bar purchases for vaulting or physical delivery, automated recurring purchases, interest on uninvested cash, and yield options on precious metals holdings. To fund this next phase, the fintech is preparing to launch a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube.
