Author: David Kimberley

Easier payments mean the potential for losing business. Hard payments mean a bigger risk of reputation risk. So what do you do?

Lightyear was previously operating in the UK via an appointed representative agreement. The broker will launch ISAs next year too.

Version 5.0 of the trading platform gives brokers and traders access to a wide range of new products, including synced algo trading strategies.

The new integration with Arqaam Capital means clients will be able to access trading across the different exchanges in the Gulf region.

FTMO has been slowly attempting to expand into the brokerage sector, with ex-FXCM and Skilling executive Michael Kamerman.

We speak to Steve Sanders from Interactive Brokers about what the US broker’s plans to expand its events contracts offering.

YourPropFirm provides the full technology stack needed to launched a prop firm. This deal means clients can now access DXtrade.

IG Group set up Spectrum Markets in 2019, with the firm regulated in Germany as a multilateral trading facility, mainly for trading ETDs.

Revolut was already offering some investment products to UK clients but that was done via an appointed representative agreement.

European regulators will probably ban event contracts, allowing US firms to dominate another market. Also we look at the Axi stockbroker deal.

Pepperstone will sponsor the UFC and become their Official Partner for Asia. The UFC claims to have over 400m fans across the continent.

Acuity Trading will provide its full suite of trading, news flow, and analytics products to OneRoyal.

ATFX Connect will provides its pricing and liquidity to brokers globally, who are using Centroid Solutions to manage their risk.

Gao joins Axi from Pepperstone, where he was also Regional Director. He has two decades of experience and has worked at Exness and GAIN Capital.

Doo Financial has approval from CySEC and the broker also said it has entered the Indonesian market by acquiring a local company.

ACY Securities will acquire INGOT Brokers’ South Africa license. This will require upgrades for the firm to be able to offer CFDs.

Biggs has been with Finalto since 2018, working in trading roles. He was previously the company’s Group Head of Risk and Trading.

The bid probably has two aims – to allow Axi to more easily add stockbroking and, secondly, to acquire a huge number of clients at low cost.

Crypto.com has said it wants to add other investment products over the next 12 months across the US, Australia and the European Union.

FunderPro already has a CFD offering. Several props have added futures, possibly to cater to US clients and also to satisfy client demand.

Monaxa is the latest in a string of brokers to offer prop trading. The company already offers a standard CFD product, as well as copy trading.

Exinity – which owns Alpari and FXTM – will use TraderEvolution technology and its trading engine to power its backend systems.

Discover World-Class Solutions for Brokers and Prop Firms. Meet the cTrader team in London next week and see what the platform can do for you.

Khatib and Melhem were both at amana for a long period of time. The new CFI execs will work in Dubai as CBDO and CMO respectively.

Onyx Capital announced its retail brokerage arm in the summer. The oil broker has hired execs from several firms, including CMC Markets and IG.

Swissquote, Capital.com, Bitkub, and several others have all seen a surge in app downloads since Donald Trump won the US election.

Soutzis has been with the firm since its inception in 2016. Capital.com also announced that Global CEO Kypros Zoumidou is leaving the firm.

ZFX launched the new cryptocurrency – called ZDS – at the start of November. It can be used as cashback or as a bonus for trading.

Sebbata was most recently CEO at APM Capital Markets, which acquired the FCA-regulated arm of neobroker BUX earlier this year.

Revolut is hiring a Head of Brokerage for its local crypto entity, as well as a compliance officer for its separate wealth and trading division.

XTB is hiring for a Head of Crypto and has an entity set up in Cyprus that could feasibly run it. The signs point to this happening in the near future.

oneZero said it will use the funds from Golden Gate Capital to continue its organic growth, but also hinted at the possibility for M&A.

Mahesh Sethuraman has also been made Singapore CEO at Saxo Bank. The changes come after Adam Reynolds left the firm two months ago.

Investa is one of several firms looking to bring the US options trading boom over to the UK. The company has raised almost £2m in total.

XM is the latest firm to rebrand, with several firms changing their look in the last 12 months to have more of a mobile-friendly, fintech feel.

FXGT has a new app and webtrader. Clients are able to access TradingView charts on the new app, which went live at the end of last week.

Robinhood made over $2m in one week from events contracts. But what are events contracts, how do they work, and can brokers use them?

Farah joins STARTRADER from MultiBank, where she was Head of International Sales. STARTRADER has been expanding globally over the last year.

ATFX has had a long presence in Mexico but the new office will act as a hub for its operations in the country and in the wider LATAM region.

Kresovic will work as Global Head of Premium Client Sales at Blueberry, which recently rebranded and launched its prop offering Blueberry Funded.

The partnership means that brokers using Your Bourse’s bridging technology can on board with ATFX Connect as a liquidity provider.

This is the second major sporting partnership for NAGA, with the broker also sponsoring German football team Borussia Dortmund.

The broker wants to hire 200 people across a range of different roles. The broker also reported a 20% quarter-on-quarter increase to volume for Q3.

We speak to John Bogue and Wei Zhang about what the ATFX Connect team have been doing and the products they now offer to insti clients.

We speak to EC Markets UK Managing Director Adam Saward about why he joined the firm, what the broker’s UK plans are, and more.

The brokerage group said that more than 200m election contracts have been traded on its platform since they were launched at the end of October.

DeFinity Markets Co-Founder said the firm will offer new clients 50% off their fees for the first 100m that they transact on the company’s ECN.

Robinhood has already launched margin trading in the UK. The competition for options trading is heating up, as multiple firms add the product.

FunderPro has historically used TradeLocker, a brand that is owned by the same parent company, Malta-based tech firm Red Acre.

amana will provide its pricing and liquidity to brokers using Hybrid Solutions technology.

We speak to Greg Rubin, Head of Axi Select, to find out why the broker structured its offering in the way it did – by refusing to offer demo accounts.

Santos has been with Markets.com – the retail arm of Finalto – for close to a year. He has held senior roles at Trading 212 and London Capital Group.

CME Group has seen a huge increase in the volume of micro contracts being traded, with gold ADV up to its highest levels ever in 2024.

CMC Markets is onboarding US clients via a partnership with Alpaca Securities. The company lets you trade via its OPTO brand and app.

Skowronski joins INFINOX from Admirals, where he was Chief Revenue Officer. He has held senior roles at other brokers, including Alpari and OANDA.

XTB continues to see huge numbers of new clients but with a decreasing ARPU. The firm is going big on investment products to market itself.

Cboe revenues were up across the board, with notable increases in options trading and the exchange operator’s futures trading business.

Ramesh Mungara joins ECB Financial from VT Markets, where he was the retail broker’s Head of Africa for just over 12 months.

We speak to the company behind many of the biggest players in the industry about new tech, client demands, and whether crypto is the real deal.

The deal means CMC Markets will provide market access and white label technology to ASB Bank clients when they want to invest in the stock market.

XTB has onboarded more than 100,000 clients in every quarter so far in 2024. Total client acquisition stands at 340,420 in the year to date.

Archax is acquiring the firm so it can operate in the European Union. The deal also gives it permissions to offer clients derivatives trading.

CMC Markets will look to get permissions that would help it facilitate trading in NZ-listed equities for both retail and institutional clients.

The company has added a suite of new products and services in the last month. That includes tournaments, account scaling, and auto currency conversion.

The new features mean clients can request performance reports and receive them automatically. Devexa is a chatbot developed by Devexperts.

Former IG Group CFO and interim CEO Charlie Rozes left the company in the summer. Abrahams joins IG from Virgin Money UK.

Exness will distribute its pricing and liquidity to other brokers that are using Centroid Solutions’ risk management and bridging technology.

Multibank.io is a new arm of the Multibank group. Kim was previously Head of Derivatives at crypto prime brokerage firm Falcon X.

Revolut already has close to 1m customers in Switzerland but until now it has acted more like an e-payments firm, as it did previously in the UK.

FXPesa has opened an education centre in Dar Es Salaam. It seems to be run in conjunction with a local IB and education provider.

26 Degrees launched pairs trading earlier this year. The new products allow firms to trade gold against indices and the price of oil.

NAGA launched its Telegram mini app at the end of September. In one month, the broker has managed to acquire over 166,000 monthly users.

Plus500 made $168.1m from client trading in Q3 2024. The broker also onboarded 24,922 clients over the course of the three month period.

The partnership with B2C2 is likely so that the market maker can provide faster settlement in fiat currencies. OpenPayd is owned by Ozan Ozerk.

If you were to start a broker today, it seems like it would be best to start an offshore broker for EMs and then do prop for Europe and the UK.

The partnership means Centroid Solutions clients can trade in Saudi equities, via SNB Capital – the largest investment bank in Saudi Arabia.

Trading 212 users can now make single payments with a disposable card. The product is offered via a partnership with EMI Paynetics.

Daman Markets is the first broker to partner with the Dubai Racing Club, with the company looking to elevate its brand to be a premium offering.

Suchata ‘Nutty’ Kongsupachak fled Thailand in 2022, after orchestrating a scam that is thought to have cost 6,000 investors upwards of $60m.

Titan FX is doing lots of social work in Vanuatu. We go and explore Port Vila with them to find out what that is and why people like working at the firm.

The partnership will mean that investors using BUX can access IPOs and new share issuances. PrimaryBid has been active in Europe since 2018.

Markets.com is currently getting a lot of traction in the MENA region. The firm’s rebrand fits with some wider trends we’ve seen within the industry.

ATFX has been a sponsor of the Duke of Edinburgh Cup for over seven years now, an initiative that has raised over £5m for charity over the years.

We talk to Deriv Co-CEOs Jean-Yves Sireau and Rakshit Choudhary about how to survive in the business, working as Co-CEOs, and what Deriv’s plans are today.

Galal was most recently the MENA rep for rival prop firm The Trading Pit. He has also held introducing broker roles at brokerages FxPro and Tickmill.

Senior Binance exec Tigran Gambaryan had been held on money laundering charges since February. He will be released due to ill-health.

Brazil has become a big market for Hantec Markets. The company’s efforts fit with a wider wave of activity, with firms looking to expand in LATAM.

PiP World Founder Saad Naja has had stints at Paddy Power, crypto broker Kraken, as well as at GAIN Capital – the owner of City Index and Forex.com

We speak to Match-Trader Platform Head Alexis Droussiotis at Match-Trade Technologies HQ about what the company sees happening in the industry.

Our latest podcast with BullRush CEO Trent Hoerr. BullRush runs paid trading tournaments with cash prizes and is possibly the first company with this model.

MAS Markets has onboarded several senior executives this year. The broker also revealed a tripling in YoY revenue for its 2024 financial year.

The company is operating using an agreement with Alpaca and is providing no dealing fee access to trading in US stocks and ETFs.

Swissquote has also added a recurring investment option. Combined, the two products make it much easier for investors to create the portfolio they want.

MAS Markets has taken several steps to expand over the last 18 months. The firm has a crypto entity in Lithuania and a funds offering in Luxembourg.

ATFX is the latest broker to launch a prop offering. The broker said it will launch the product under its existing umbrella of regulated entities.

Saward has been in the trading industry for two decades. Prior to EC Markets, he held senior roles at Tradeview and the UK branch of INFINOX.

DriveWealth tech has been the driving force behind commission-free trading. This partnership means clients can more easily access share lending services.

Walker was previously at IC Markets for almost a decade. He joined rival firm Global Prime in 2019 and is the latest in a string of execs to relocate to Dubai.

What does K Pop company HYBE tell us about broker marketing. And what do they do that is similar to the Exness Team Pro campaign.

Andreou was most recently at BDswiss and spent close to a decade at HFM. He is the latest in a string of ex-broker execs to either join or launch a prop.