Revolut Secures Conditional Approval for US Bank Charter

Revolut has secured conditional approval for a US bank charter, according to an industry daily round-up, moving the London-based fintech closer to holding a regulated US banking licence. Further terms of the approval were not detailed in the summary.

Broker, platform and vendor moves

The same recap reported that FX's share of retail broker volume continued to fall as CFD trading shifts toward other asset classes. Your Bourse opened a new office in Kuala Lumpur, and Brokeree rolled out a redesigned PAMM system for managers running pooled investment accounts.

Among the larger corporate moves, Nasdaq invested 100 million dollars in Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken. OpenAI is building a finance-focused version of ChatGPT, while the CFTC is weighing where the boundary lies between prediction markets and sportsbooks.

Retail brokerage operations also featured: IG Group is preparing hundreds of layoffs, and Valutrades has paused onboarding of new CFD clients. CMC Markets, by contrast, is expanding overnight trading in US shares. The recap also flagged that fake news is being used to fuel financial scams.

Prop trading and dispute resolution

On the complaints side, the Financial Commission is stepping in to mediate disputes in retail prop trading. In an FM Talks interview, host Adonis Adoni spoke with the organisation's COO, Nikolai Isayev, about how complaints are handled, the Commission's new prop trading certification, and how it screens firms for fake certificates and scam operators.

Isayev pointed to the Commission's latest figures, which show a 1:3 win-loss ratio in favour of brokers, as the discussion covered the consumer risks around prop trading and whether the sector belongs under financial or gaming regulation. The broader question raised was who protects traders when a firm refuses to honour a decision, given that prop trading still sits in a regulatory grey area.