5 things traders expect from brokerage platforms and how to deliver them

From instant payments to quick issue resolution, find out what traders want and how to satisfy their demands.

With competitors only a mouse-click away, no brokerage can afford to annoy existing customers, or gets a second chance to make a first impression with new ones.

So, what are the top must-haves for traders today? And how can the right payment partner help brokerages deliver?

1. Instant transactions

Traders want to trade. And the markets wait for no-one. So, when it comes to funding or withdrawals from a trading account, only fast will do.

Yet for brokerages, often speed comes at a cost. Pay-ins via Visa and Mastercard are instant but expensive. Whereas bank transfers are cheaper but slow at 3-5 days.

Inpay rejects this either/or thinking to offer the best of both worlds: pay-ins that are both quick and cost-effective. How?

We’ve built our own proprietary global payment network as an alternative to SWIFT wire transfers.

Our Open Banking solution pulls funds directly from a customer’s bank account. That means that brokerages can collect 24x7x365 in countries with instant payment systems.

That’s the 36 European markets via the instant SEPA solution and the UK with instant GBP. And in near-real time elsewhere.

2. No fees

Spoiler alert: traders don’t like fees.

Average deposit and withdrawal values tend to be high. Traders and brokerages want the full value of their transactions, without fees or deductions.

Inpay offers global coverage in 200+ countries for pay-ins/payouts at a local price.

That’s up to a 90% saving on fees versus a card acquirer, with zero chargeback risk and 99% transaction success rate.

How can Inpay’s price be up to several times cheaper than SWIFT?

Generally, the more banks involved in an international SWIFT transfer chain, the slower and more expensive the payment.

As Inpay controls the payment routing, we can ensure that there aren’t unknown FX factors or intermediary bank fees.

Payments arrive in full without deductions, so there are no nasty surprises. Which makes for a better proposition for you and your traders.

3. Choice of payment methods

Traders want to pay their way. Whether that’s bank transfer in Europe, e-cash in Latin America or mobile money in sub-Saharan Africa.

Business ambitions may be global, but customers will always be local. No-one’s looking for a new to pay.

Partnering with local payment service providers to achieve this seems a good idea on paper, but there are downsides.

Poor APIs, documentation, long implementation times and endless testing. And that may be for every local or alternative payment method (APM) integrated.

Inpay can simplify the process with local payment rails. This side-steps the unscalable model of optimizing payment in each country or region in which you and your traders are active.

Access to our entire global network is via a single, simple API connection, file upload or bespoke integration.

So, you can skip the boring but important back-end stuff. And focus instead on growing your business via front-end activities that add value and stand-out. Like a great UX.

4. Great UX

Traders demand a great experience.

They may compare you to other brokerages. But mostly, they’re comparing you to Google, Apple, Uber and other facilitators of ease in their lives.

Instant, account-to-account (A2A) payments and refunds are musts in many markets. You need a feature set comparable to your competitors but also compatible with your current and target markets.

Inpay offers these across its proprietary network. But it’s our value-added services that helps differentiate your offering to traders.

This includes quicker settlement, easier reconciliation, improved data and analytics, industry-leading transaction success rates and more.

Consider how your brokerage could use this to drive additional sales. What about diversifying into new markets or customer segments? Improving margins? Executing on your strategic priorities? Building flexibility into operations and so on?

5. Quick fixes to problems

Traders don’t like problems but if they occur, they expect quick fixes.

Nothing should get in the way of trading. Or loading funds to or liquidating funds from their trading accounts.

Inpay’s modern, cloud-based systems are resilient to fluctuating volumes for maximum uptime. We offer 100% systems availability with full redundancy.

When it comes to regulation, our robust compliance framework and AI-enhanced transaction screening system helps detect fraud and satisfy regulatory requirements market to market.

Our on-us routing and pre-funding of transactions contributes towards better traceability. That means fewer issues and quicker issue resolution.

What’s more, our new customer portal allows brokerages to view all its payments in one place. Which helps with reconciliation but also improves decision-making and problem-solving.

Customer support is via humans – not bots – who’ve served the complex needs of regulated entities in various sectors since 2008.