via CNBC:
Robinhood’s co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev defended the practice in a blog post.
Tenev said like its broker-dealer peers, the start-up “participates in rebate programs which help customers get additional price improvement for their orders by creating competition amongst the exchanges and liquidity providers who fill the orders, often resulting in superior execution quality.”
“We send your orders to the market maker that’s most likely to give you the best execution quality,” Tenev said a blog post. The company also said it does not take rebates into consideration. “All market makers with whom we work have the same rebate rate.”