Manila has something most trading hubs do not: a very large pool of people who already work night shifts in English for foreign companies. For a broker or a prop firm that has to cover the London and New York sessions, that is not a small detail. It is the difference between a support desk that answers at 02:00 and one that apologises the next morning.
Which is why we see two kinds of enquiry from the Philippines. Founders launching their own firm, and foreign firms building their operations team here. The software answer is the same in both cases.
Who this page is for
Anyone starting or running a brokerage or a prop firm with people in Metro Manila. A brokerage means you hold client money, quote prices and carry a licence. A prop firm means you sell evaluations, fund the traders who pass and pay them from your own budget. The compliance weight, the capital and the failure modes differ, and we set them side by side in broker versus prop firm.
The regulatory backdrop, described only
In the Philippines, securities and investment-taking activity is supervised by the SEC, while banking, foreign exchange and payment systems fall to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. The SEC has an active record of publishing advisories against entities soliciting investments or offering trading schemes without the required registration, and those advisories are public and searchable.
Retail margin FX and CFD dealing is not a routine domestic licence category, so the common pattern is a foreign licensed operating entity with Philippine staff. That is a description of what firms do, not a recommendation of what you should do. Ask a Philippine-qualified lawyer before you commit to a structure. Useful background: offshore broker licences, regulated versus unregulated brokers and how licence registers work.
SINGUARD is a software vendor. We never hold client funds, never process payments and never advise on licensing. Your firm carries its own authorisation, AML programme and client money obligations.
The stack
eTrader is the trading terminal on web, iOS and Android, with the market data feed included rather than sold as a separate contract. Charts and order entry are the same on the phone as on the desktop, which matters in a market where most clients will never open a laptop to trade.
The Broker CRM covers clients, KYC state, deposits and withdrawals, per-server instrument and markup configuration, routing and risk settings, reporting and an audit trail. The Prop Firm CRM covers challenge templates, drawdown and consistency enforcement, breach records, funded promotion, certificates and payout approval queues.
Everything is fully managed by us, and the firm goes live in 24 hours once your own licensing, banking and paperwork are in place. Your brand carries the portal, the emails and the client-facing pages.
Payments, banking and the peso reality
The Philippines is one of the most e-wallet-driven markets in the region. Clients expect to fund from a wallet on their phone, not from a bank branch, and a deposit flow that assumes a card and a billing address will convert badly. A foreign-licensed entity settling in USD then has a conversion cost and a reconciliation problem on every peso deposit.
Three practical points. Card approval rates for trading merchants vary sharply by issuing bank, which we cover in card approval rates. Local methods usually arrive through a regional aggregator rather than a direct integration, discussed in high-risk merchant accounts. And payouts are their own problem set, laid out in payout rails compared. The CRM records, matches and reports on whatever you connect, and nothing more.
Withdrawal expectations follow the same pattern. Clients who funded from a wallet want the money back in that wallet, and a firm that can only pay out by bank transfer will spend its support hours explaining why. Decide the payout route before you launch, not after the first profitable month.
Hours, language and staffing
Manila is UTC+8. London opens at 16:00 local and New York at 21:30, so a firm here can cover the whole active day with an afternoon and an evening shift instead of a night rota. English is a working language for client support, sales and compliance documentation, and Filipino for consumer-facing marketing.
The structures we see are consistent: a foreign operating company, a Philippine services entity employing the support and marketing team, outsourced KYC, and a compliance officer who reports into the licensed entity rather than the local office. The software has to work for a team that is not sitting next to the regulator, which is how ours is built.
Book a call
SINGUARD's Executive Directors, Alex Onta & Roman Onta, run these conversations themselves. Alex leads eTrader, which he built with Roman on design, and the two of them built the Broker CRM and the Prop Firm CRM together. Book a call or text us, bring your licensing plan, and we will be specific about what the software covers and what it does not.
Nearby markets: Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City and Singapore. Full list of locations.
Where SINGUARD is based, and where we meet firms in Manila
All of the software, the contracts and the policies come from SGHK Softwares Limited in Hong Kong, the holding company that builds and licenses eTrader and both CRMs. The team works out of Dubai, where both Executive Directors, Alex Onta and Roman Onta, live for most of the year, and our licensed UAE entity is SINGUARD GLOBAL FZC in Ajman Free Zone. We hold no office or licence in Philippines, and none is needed: the platform is delivered and managed from our own clustered servers, so a firm in Manila runs exactly what a firm anywhere else runs, and your licence, your client money and your compliance obligations stay entirely with your own entity.
Being in Dubai keeps the team on the industry circuit and within easy reach of Manila for calls and meetings, in a time zone that overlaps most of the trading world.
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
Does SINGUARD have an office in Manila?
No. SINGUARD holds no office, entity, licence or staff in Manila or anywhere in the Philippines. We are a software company serving firms established elsewhere, and the team travels to industry events.
Is SINGUARD registered with the SEC in the Philippines?
No. SINGUARD sells software and is not a broker, dealer, bank or payment institution. It holds no registration with the SEC or the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. Licensing and compliance belong to the operating firm.
Can a Philippines team run a prop firm on the Prop Firm CRM?
The Prop Firm CRM handles evaluations, rule breaches, funded accounts, certificates and payouts for firms wherever they are established. Where the firm is incorporated and who it may onboard are the firm's own decisions.
What does going live involve for a Manila-based team?
Once your own licensing, banking and paperwork are complete, we deliver the platform, both CRMs and the data feed live in 24 hours, fully managed. Your team does not build or maintain servers.
Related Reading
Card approval rates
Why the same card is approved by one acquirer and declined by another, and what to fix.
Prop FirmsBest prop firm software
What to test before you sign: rules engine, payouts, audit trail and support response.
BrokersHow to start a forex brokerage
Entity, licence, liquidity, platform and payments, in the order they have to happen.