Backpack Securities vs Traditional Brokers: What Is the Difference?

Backpack, Interactive Brokers and Robinhood all provide access to securities through brokerage infrastructure, but their account structures and product experiences differ. The most relevant differences include trading availability, the treatment of uninvested cash, how stocks and digital assets are funded, and whether eligible securities can be converted into tokenized securities on Solana.

Backpack’s distinguishing feature is not simply that stocks and crypto appear in the same product. It connects traditional securities infrastructure with an onchain distribution model, allowing eligible securities to be converted into tokenized securities issued by Backpack and redeemed back into the corresponding security entitlement.

What Is Backpack’s Neobrokerage Model?

Backpack is a neobrokerage: a brokerage built for continuous markets, unified capital, on/offchain connectivity, and research that lives in the same place you trade.

Traditional brokers are gradually adding crypto, extended-hours trading, and digital asset infrastructure to systems originally built around conventional market hours and separate product accounts. At the same time, crypto exchanges are expanding into stocks and other traditional financial products.

Backpack is part of that convergence. What makes it a neobrokerage is not simply the addition of stocks to a crypto exchange, but an account architecture where stocks, crypto, and derivatives are held and funded in one place rather than in separate accounts.

Backpack vs. Interactive Brokers vs. Robinhood: At a Glance

What You Actually Hold

Customers generally hold securities through brokerage accounts as security entitlements under Article 8 of the Uniform Commercial Code. The account structure, governing terms and services surrounding those holdings differ by broker.

A security entitlement can provide economic and operational benefits associated with the underlying security, including cash dividends, supported corporate actions and brokerage transfers, subject to the applicable product and account terms.

This differs from products that provide contractual price exposure without a security entitlement in the underlying shares. For CFDs and other synthetic products, dividend and corporate-action treatment depends on the product and issuer terms.

Trading Hours and Weekend Availability

Traditional brokers have expanded beyond regular US market hours. Robinhood's 24 Hour Market supports select stocks and ETFs from Sunday at 8:00 p.m. ET through Friday at 8:00 p.m. ET. Interactive Brokers offers overnight trading for eligible US stocks and ETFs from 8:00 p.m. to 3:50 a.m. ET, beginning Sunday evening and ending Friday morning. Neither provides continuous weekend stock trading.

Backpack's US stock trading extends well past the regular session, covering pre-market, after-hours, and overnight trading on weekdays. Select stocks trade 24/7, including weekends and US market holidays. For anyone in a time zone where the US session lands in the middle of the night, that flexibility is the difference between trading on your schedule and trading on Wall Street's.

Earning Yield on Idle USD

Most brokers offer some way to earn a return on uninvested cash. The structure varies, and the structure is what determines how much of your cash actually earns.

Interactive Brokers pays 3.13% on eligible USD balances, but only on amounts above $10,000, and the full rate requires an account value above $100,000. Below that, the rate scales down in proportion to account size. 

Robinhood’s published 3.35% High-Yield Cash Program rate is available to eligible Robinhood Gold customers.

Backpack pays yield on eligible USD through its lending market, with no minimum balance and no subscription tier. Lent USD stays available while it earns: when you buy a stock, Backpack pulls the amount back automatically, so cash earning yield funds the purchase in one step rather than requiring you to unwind a position first. Lent USD also remains usable as collateral for crypto and perpetuals positions.

Account Structure and Shared Funding

Interactive Brokers and Robinhood provide access to both securities and crypto, but the products operate through different account or entity structures. The funding experience and movement of cash between products therefore differ from Backpack’s unified account model.

On Backpack, stocks, crypto and perpetuals are accessible from one account, with shared USD funding where supported. Eligible spot, perpetual and lending balances participate in Backpack’s cross-margin system; securities access and collateral treatment remain subject to the applicable product terms.