Start with the part that decides everything in Ukraine: currency control. The National Bank of Ukraine sets the rules for cross border payments and foreign exchange operations, and since the imposition of martial law those rules have been restrictive, with limits and conditions on moving funds out of the country. Whatever the securities regulator permits, a retail trading product that requires clients to send money abroad and receive it back runs directly into that regime. Any plan for Ukrainian retail clients has to be checked against the currency rules in force at the time, with local counsel, because they have been adjusted repeatedly.
The securities supervisor is the National Securities and Stock Market Commission, known as the NSSMC. It regulates the capital markets and organised commodity markets: licensing of professional participants, disclosure, market conduct, and the infrastructure around trading and settlement. Ukraine has been rebuilding its capital markets law with European alignment in mind as part of the accession process, so the direction of the framework is toward the European model.
What that means for retail leveraged products
Retail contracts for difference and rolling spot forex sit in a difficult position in Ukraine. Whether a given product can lawfully be offered to Ukrainian residents, by whom, and under what licence, is a question with two locks on it: the capital markets rules and the currency rules. Passing one does not get you past the other. That is why so many firms serving the market historically did so from outside it, and why doing that carries real consequences: it exposes the firm to enforcement in Ukraine, exposes clients to payments that cannot lawfully be made, and gives banks a reason to close accounts. We are not going to describe workarounds, because the honest answer is that there are none that survive scrutiny.
Ukraine is a country at war with an active sanctions regime and heavy financial monitoring. Every counterparty in the chain, from your bank to your acquirer to your liquidity provider, will apply enhanced scrutiny to payments touching the region. Screening quality is not a compliance nicety here, it is the condition on which accounts stay open. See sanctions screening basics.
Moldova: small, aligning, and easier to read
Moldova's non bank financial market, including the securities market, insurance and non bank lending, is supervised by the National Commission for Financial Markets, the CNPF, with the National Bank of Moldova responsible for banks and payments. Moldova is also an EU candidate and has been aligning its financial legislation with the European framework, including anti money laundering rules and capital markets provisions.
The domestic market is small. There is no realistic scenario where Moldova alone supports a retail brokerage of any size, so a Moldovan licensed firm is either serving a niche domestic base or is part of a wider structure. The second is where founders get careless, because a small country's authorisation used as the licensing anchor for clients across many countries is precisely the structure that counterparty risk teams downgrade, for the reasons set out in regulated versus unregulated.
What Moldova does offer is a functioning supervisor, alignment work that is genuinely in progress, and proximity to the European Union both geographically and legally. For a firm building for the long term with an eye on eventual membership, that is a different proposition from an island registration, though the accession timeline is nobody's to promise.
How the money side treats both
Banking is the binding constraint. Ukrainian and Moldovan banks operate under intense correspondent scrutiny because of regional sanctions exposure and because of the volume of enhanced monitoring their correspondents apply. A licensed local firm with local clients and clean screening is bankable domestically. A firm with a cross border client book and a complicated ownership chain is where de-risking hits, and de-risking is a decision made by a bank several steps removed from you, applying its own risk appetite to a whole category. That mechanism is explained in banking for trading firms.
Card acquiring for investment and trading merchants runs through high risk underwriting: merchant category codes, chargeback monitoring thresholds, rolling reserves and detailed know your business files. Add a jurisdiction that underwriters rate as elevated risk and the file needs more evidence to reach the same outcome. Cross border card acceptance where the cardholder country and the merchant country differ also carries its own scheme rules and higher costs, which affects the approval rates discussed in high risk merchant accounts.
Liquidity providers apply their own onboarding standards and are conservative about counterparties in active conflict zones, mainly because of operational continuity and sanctions exposure rather than any judgement about the firm. Advertising platforms and app stores apply their own financial services policies, which are set by target market and usually require authorisation in the market being advertised into, plus a separate verification step for financial services advertisers in a number of countries.
The position worth taking
For a firm whose plan is to serve Ukrainian retail clients with leveraged products from an offshore entity, this route does not work. The currency regime, the enforcement exposure and the payment reality all point the same way. For a firm building domestic services under domestic rules, with local licensing and local payment methods, Ukraine is a real market with a serious technology sector and a supervisor moving toward European standards. Moldova is a smaller version of the same picture, with less enforcement noise and a clearer alignment path.
SINGUARD sells software. We supply platforms, CRM and portals to licensed operators, we hold no financial services licence anywhere, and the regulatory questions in this article need answers from lawyers admitted in Ukraine or Moldova.
"In Ukraine the currency rules decide the product before the securities rules get a say. Read them first and half the business plans on my desk answer themselves."
— Roman Onta, Executive Director, SINGUARD
Key Takeaways
- The NSSMC supervises Ukraine's capital markets while the National Bank of Ukraine sets the currency control rules, and both have to be satisfied.
- Currency restrictions under martial law directly affect whether client funds can move cross border, which can decide whether a product is deliverable at all.
- Moldova's non bank financial market is supervised by the CNPF, with EU candidate alignment work in progress and a small domestic market.
- Regional sanctions exposure means banks, acquirers and liquidity providers apply enhanced scrutiny, and weak screening ends relationships quickly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which regulator licenses investment firms in Ukraine?
The National Securities and Stock Market Commission supervises capital market participants. Currency and payment rules are set separately by the National Bank of Ukraine, and both frameworks apply at once.
Can an offshore broker legally take Ukrainian retail clients?
That depends on Ukrainian law on both the capital markets and the currency control side, and the combination is restrictive. It is a question for Ukrainian counsel, and firms that ignore it face enforcement exposure and payment failures.
Who supervises the securities market in Moldova?
The National Commission for Financial Markets, known as the CNPF, oversees the non bank financial market including securities, while the National Bank of Moldova covers banks and payment services.
About the Author
Roman Onta is an Executive Director at SINGUARD. He builds the Prop Firm CRM, the Broker CRM, Scalegram and CopySignals side by side with his brother Alex Onta, and he helped on the design of eTrader, the division Alex built and leads. His ground is worldwide payment processing, AML compliance and the corporate structures brokers are built on, work the two of them carry together, shaped by executive roles in the UAE and international corporates. He lives and works in Dubai for most of the year. Meet the executive duo leading Singuard's five divisions.