Broker and prop firm software for Dubai firms.

The pattern in Dubai is familiar by now. A founder incorporates in a free zone, hires two or three people for sales and support, signs a liquidity agreement, and then discovers that the technology stack is the part nobody planned properly. Platform licence here, CRM there, a payment gateway that will not talk to either, and a bridge in the middle that somebody has to babysit. The firm is six weeks from launch and the pieces do not fit.

SINGUARD exists to remove that whole layer. We build and run the software: the eTrader trading platform with its own market data feed, the Broker CRM and the Prop Firm CRM. We host it, we patch it, we watch it. Your firm keeps the licence, the client money, the compliance obligations and the commercial decisions. We are a software vendor and nothing else.

Who this is for in Dubai

Two groups. The first is a retail broker set up by people who already sold for somebody else's brand and decided to own the book this time. They need a terminal clients will use on a phone, a CRM showing deposits and open exposure in one place, and an onboarding flow that does not lose half the leads at KYC. The second is a prop firm, usually smaller, usually faster to launch, where the whole product is a challenge account with rules attached and a payout at the end. Those two businesses need different back offices, which is why we build two, and both sit on the same terminal. If you are still deciding which you are, the difference between a broker and a prop firm is worth ten minutes before you incorporate anything.

The regulatory backdrop, described plainly

Dubai is not one regime, and this trips people up constantly. A company inside the Dubai International Financial Centre is regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority, a separate rulebook operating in the DIFC's own common law framework. A company licensed onshore in the UAE sits with the Securities and Commodities Authority. Virtual asset activity in the Emirate of Dubai outside the DIFC falls to the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority. Different rulebooks, different capital and conduct expectations, different application routes. Our explainer on the DFSA sets out the mechanics of the DIFC route.

None of that is advice, and we do not give any. We are describing the shape of the market because it changes what software you need. A DIFC-regulated firm typically wants deeper audit trails and stricter client categorisation handling than a firm running an offshore licence and marketing into other regions from a Dubai office, which is a very common structure here. Both are supported. Neither is recommended by us.

What the stack actually includes

eTrader is a web and mobile terminal with charting, order entry, alerts and a market data feed included, which matters more than founders expect. Data feed costs are one of the quieter line items that can wreck a small firm's first year budget. The Broker CRM covers client onboarding, KYC document handling, deposits and withdrawals, account groups, spread and swap markup per instrument, and an internal risk view. The Prop Firm CRM covers challenge products, the rules engine that evaluates breaches, certificates, leaderboards, affiliate tracking and payout approval.

Once your licensing and paperwork are in place, we can have the firm live in 24 hours. That number is real and it is also narrow: it describes deployment and branding of software we already run, not your regulator's timetable, not your bank's onboarding, not your liquidity provider's due diligence.

Payments and banking, the honest version

The hardest operational problem for a Dubai firm is usually not the platform. It is money movement. Banking for a leveraged trading business takes longer to arrange here than founders assume, and most firms end up with a spread of rails rather than one: a local account, card acquiring through a high risk processor, one or two regional e-wallets, and stablecoin deposits for clients in markets where cards fail. We wrote up how high risk merchant accounts are underwritten and how crypto deposits work for trading firms because the questions come up in almost every call.

Both CRMs are built for that reality. Multiple processors run side by side, each with its own routing rules, and reconciliation happens in one ledger rather than in a spreadsheet somebody maintains at midnight. Withdrawals sit behind an approval queue with a full audit trail, which is what an auditor asks for first.

Languages, hours and how firms here are staffed

A Dubai desk is rarely serving Dubai. The client book usually spans the Gulf, the Levant, South Asia and parts of Africa, so the portal needs Arabic with right to left layout alongside English, and often Hindi, Urdu and Farsi. Support hours follow Gulf Standard Time, which puts the desk in a useful position: the Asian session opens during the local afternoon and the London open lands mid to late afternoon, so one shift covers the two busiest windows without night staffing. Swap-free account groups are standard product here rather than an edge case, and how swap-free accounts are structured is worth reading before you set your groups.

Firms in this market tend to run lean: a founder, a small sales team, one compliance person and outsourced everything else. That is exactly the shape where a managed stack pays for itself, because there is no internal engineer to lose a weekend to a broken bridge.

Where to start

If you are still in the licensing phase, the useful next step is a call about sequencing, so the software is not the thing waiting on you at the end. If you are already licensed, we can show you both CRMs live and talk through migration. Alex Onta built eTrader with Roman Onta on the design side and leads the platform; Alex Onta and Roman Onta built the Broker CRM and the Prop Firm CRM together and handle compliance, payments and corporate structuring questions between them. Book a call or text us and you will speak to one of them, not a reseller.

Nearby markets we also cover: Abu Dhabi for firms looking at the ADGM route, and Cyprus for firms that want an EU-facing entity alongside a Gulf office. The full list is on our locations page.

Where SINGUARD is based, and where we meet firms in Dubai

The team is in Dubai. Both Executive Directors, Alex Onta and Roman Onta, live and work here for most of the year, so a firm in Dubai is meeting the people who build the product, in your own time zone, usually within the same week you ask. Our licensed UAE entity is SINGUARD GLOBAL FZC, licence number 48523, registered at C1 Building, B.C. 1300450, Ajman Free Zone.

Everything else sits with the holding company. SGHK Softwares Limited in Hong Kong builds and licenses eTrader and both CRMs, and it is the entity your firm signs with, under one set of policies. Our licence never replaces yours: SINGUARD sells software, and your own broker or prop firm licence, your client money and your compliance obligations stay entirely with your entity.

In person, the place to find us is the industry circuit. The team attends Forex Expo Dubai and the other major shows, wearing the SINGUARD and eTrader shirts, and you can walk up without an appointment, ask for a live demo of the terminal and both CRMs, and talk to the Executive Directors directly in English, Italian, Romanian or Russian. See where to find us at the expo.

Frequently Asked Questions

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