Profitable companies can decide to share their profits with shareholders, and pay it out in the form of a dividend. Dividends are cash payments - when you receive one, it'll be paid into your Hatch account in USD ready to re-invest.

Not all companies pay out dividends, some decide to re-invest their profits into growing their business (e.g. by increasing marketing budgets, staff or research and development). You can find historical dividend payments a company has made by looking at their investor centre (find a link to each company's investor centre when you view it in Hatch). Note: past dividends don't necessarily indicate future dividends because they're paid from profits.

If you own shares in an ETF that invests in dividend paying companies, you might also receive a dividend - sometimes at the end of every quarter.

Any spare cash you have sitting in your Hatch account is swept into an overnight Money Market Fund. The fund is invisible to you - it's just a way to store your money, but it does pay monthly dividends into your Hatch account. Yes, that's right, as soon as you deposit money into Hatch, it's working for you.

Income investors want to receive actual money every year from their investments (aka income). Dividends for these investors work in a similar way to receiving rental income on investment properties - their asset generates regular income for them to live off (or re-invest!)

More about how dividends are paid out on Hatch

More about how your dividends are taxed