The foreign exchange market is gargantuan. If you’re a successful businessperson looking for a new venture, setting up a company in the forex sector may be extremely attractive.
According to the Bank of International Settlements, over-the-counter forex trading hit $7.5 trillion per day in April 2022 – up 14% in the space of three years. This means the market is valued at $2.7 quadrillion, making it the largest financial market in the world.
There’s clearly plenty of money to be made in the industry, where brokers can charge fees on each of the millions of transactions every day. It’s not easy to start a forex platform, but we’ve outlined some steps you’ll need to follow if you’re keen to do so.
Find your target market
The first thing you’ll need to do is think about who you want your platform to be for. Do you want professional traders to use it, or do you want to make it more appealing to novices?
Once you’ve settled on that, you’ll need to take a look at who you’ll be in competition. You’ll need to offer your prospective users something better in order to attract them to your platform.
Get licensed
Most businesses looking to operate in the financial markets in the UK needs to be authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority. Getting a forex broker licence can be a difficult process to navigate, so it’s worth seeking the support of experienced lawyers to help ensure you get the authorisation you need.
Set a budget
Launching any business is going to be expensive, but it’s wise to set out how much you’re going to invest and where that money will be used. You’ll have to consider branding, marketing, platform development and many other facets to get your new forex venture off the ground.
Testing
When your platform is built, you’ll need to test it thoroughly. It’s wise to do a risk assessment and then run your software through all the possible scenarios to ensure it can handle whatever you throw at it. The last thing you want to do is go live and run into problems – especially when people are likely to have significant sums of money at stake.
Optimisation
The results from your tests will help you iron out any issues. Hopefully, you’ll be left with a bug-free forex trading platform that’s ready to revolutionise how your customers operate in the financial markets.
Launch
Finally, it’s time to launch your new business! Be sure to follow any regulations set out by the FCA and request feedback from users so you can deploy and software updates and patches as swiftly as possible.
