Starting a brokerage from Thailand

It has no policy of licensing a forex business, so offering forex trading, or a service that receives or sends money to settle forex trades, inside or outside Thailand, breaches the exchange control law. A Thai company that acts as agent for a foreign broker and pays or collects money for its clients is running a foreign payment business that needs a licence, and the Bank has no policy of granting one for this.

Marketing carries its own risk. According to the same page, advertising or inviting the public to trade foreign currency for exchange rate profit falls within the 1984 law on borrowing that defrauds the public, which carries 5 to 10 years in prison, a fine of THB 500,000 to 1,000,000 and up to THB 10,000 more for each day. Collecting people's money to trade forex on their behalf is also caught by the chain scheme decree, and even trading classes can fall under the fraud law when they amount to soliciting the public.

The individual trader is treated differently. The Bank says a Thai resident may open an account with a foreign broker personally, sending money through a Thai commercial bank within USD 5 million a year, in asset types that include derivatives contracts. Its exchange control rules set the same limit per person per calendar year for portfolio transfers that do not go through an onshore agent, require registration on the Bank's website, and ask for the Bank's prior approval of payments on derivatives linked to exchange rates involving the baht. None of this lets a business in Thailand market forex to that client or handle the money, which the answers above rule out.

It repeated that foreign currency deals must be made with businesses the Minister of Finance has licensed, and that nobody other than a commercial bank or a securities company has ever been licensed to buy, sell or exchange foreign currency for investment.

The SEC's statement of 18 September 2024 is written for foreign securities and derivatives firms that serve investors in Thailand without a Thai licence. It lists conduct the SEC may treat as unlicensed business, among them a website or app with Thai-language access, payment in Thai baht, seminars and promotions aimed at Thai investors, and service channels shared with a Thai affiliate. For a derivatives business it puts the penalty at up to three years in prison or a fine of up to THB 300,000, or both, plus up to THB 10,000 a day, and it says anyone who helps an unlicensed firm faces two thirds of that penalty under the Criminal Code.

The SEC also lists firms it does not supervise on its Investor Alert page and in its SEC Check First app. A broker licensed elsewhere should expect Thai clients and partners to look there first.

The Thailand Futures Exchange lists USD/THB, EUR/THB and JPY/THB futures and two cross rates, EUR/USD and USD/JPY. All five are cash settled against a reference rate published at 11:00 Bangkok time on the last trading day, and each has a daily price limit and a position limit: the EUR/USD contract, for example, uses a multiplier of 30,000 and caps a net position at 50,000 contracts.

Clients reach the exchange through a derivatives broker, which needs an SEC licence under section 16 and must keep customer assets apart from its own under section 33. The SEC's 2024 statement says an applicant first sets up a company in Thailand with paid-up capital, suitable people and working systems, that the SEC Board decides derivatives licences, and that the SEC inspects the systems before the firm opens. A group that has run securities or derivatives business abroad for at least five consecutive years, under a regulator that is an IOSCO member and a Signatory A to its multilateral memorandum, can ask for a faster review. That is an exchange brokerage passing orders to TFEX, a different business from a broker that takes the other side of its clients' trades.

Read against the Bank of Thailand's answers and the SEC's list of what counts as reaching Thai investors, the cautious plan leaves Thai residents out of the client terms and keeps Thai-language marketing, baht payments and local seminars out of the launch. Our overview of licence options outside the country compares the usual choices.

Funding that company is an exchange control matter as well. The Bank of Thailand's rules let a Thai company or individual invest without limit in an overseas business in which it holds at least 10% of the shares, with the money normally sent in foreign currency. In the other direction, anyone who receives USD 1 million or more from abroad must bring it into Thailand and sell it to an authorised bank or deposit it in a foreign currency account within 360 days. Settle both with Thai counsel before money moves, and use our guide to what a brokerage costs to start for the budget. This is not legal advice.

On our platform the brokerage is the counterparty to every client trade, whether it keeps the trade in-house or covers it with its liquidity provider. Pelris is not a liquidity provider and never holds client money, so the licence, the bank accounts and the payment providers all sit with your offshore company.

On Android it goes onto the home screen with a single tap, iPhone users follow a short guided step, and no app store sits in between. Forex, gold and silver, oil, stock indices, crypto and US stocks are all on it, and every instrument carries its own spread, contract size and number of digits.

Because Thailand offers no forex licence to follow, the leverage limits and loss rules your clients get come from the regulator that licenses you. Leverage is set per account type and per account. The margin engine tracks live equity and free margin, sends a margin call warning and stops accounts out automatically at the levels your brokerage sets, closing the biggest loser first. If an account still finishes below zero, an admin can reset it to zero in the CRM, and that write-off stays on the record.

Deposits and withdrawals run instantly or through approval, against bank and payment details your brokerage sets itself, so the channels clients see are the ones your licence and your banks support. Identity documents are reviewed before any withdrawal is paid, and sensitive staff actions are written to an audit trail.

Your sales team works on your own brand: a leads pipeline that records each lead's source and who it is assigned to, a single record per client holding accounts, money, trades, documents and calls, and five roles from admin down to sales, with each agent limited to their own book. Lead sources also help compliance confirm that no campaign is reaching people your terms exclude. For the cost, see what each plan costs: one flat monthly fee, no setup fee, and the first month free.