Broker and prop firm software for South African firms.

South Africa produces more retail traders per head than any other market we deal with, and it produces founders. A trading educator in Sandton with twenty thousand followers eventually asks the obvious question: why send this audience to somebody else's broker. The answer is usually the technology bill and the fear of running it. Both of those we can take off the table.

SINGUARD supplies the platform, the data feed and the CRM as one managed service, branded as yours, live within 24 hours once your own licensing and paperwork are in place. Your firm holds the authorisation and the client relationship. We are a software company, nothing more.

Who this is for in Johannesburg and beyond

Three groups. Established FSPs adding a proprietary platform instead of reselling a foreign one. New brokers built by people who came out of the local sales floors. And prop firms, which have grown quickly in South Africa because the trader base is large, mobile-first and used to paying for education.

The prop model is a different business from broking and it fails for different reasons. The article on why prop firms fail is blunt about the two big ones: pricing the challenge wrong, and rules that cannot be enforced by the platform. The second is a software problem and we fixed it in ours.

The regulatory backdrop, described only

The Financial Sector Conduct Authority regulates market conduct in South Africa, and a firm advising on or intermediating financial products needs authorisation as a Financial Services Provider under the FAIS Act, with key individuals and representatives who meet fit and proper requirements. A firm issuing CFDs to retail clients as principal falls under the Over-the-Counter Derivative Provider regime, which is a heavier authorisation than a plain intermediary licence. Prudential matters sit with the Prudential Authority, and cross-border money movement runs into South African Reserve Bank exchange control rules, which is the detail foreign founders miss most often.

We describe this, we do not advise on it. Your compliance officer and legal counsel decide which category you apply for. Our FSCA explainer goes through the structure, and the licence versus registration piece is worth reading if a vendor has ever told you their licence covers you.

What SINGUARD provides

eTrader is the trading platform, built by Alex Onta with Roman Onta on the design. Web, iOS and Android under your brand, with the data feed included. That matters here because a large share of South African traders will only ever open the phone app, which is the point of the mobile-first traders article.

The Broker CRM handles onboarding, FICA-style identity checks through your KYC provider, deposits, withdrawals, client accounts and the audit trail behind every one of them. The Prop Firm CRM runs evaluation phases, server-side drawdown and consistency rules, payout requests and certificates. Alex Onta and Roman Onta built both together and carry compliance, payments and corporate structuring between them.

Managed means our engineers run the infrastructure, apply updates and watch the feed. You hire salespeople and a compliance officer, not a platform team.

Payments, banking and exchange control

This is where South African firms differ from every other market on our list. The rand is not freely convertible, cross-border flows are reported, and your bank will ask what the money is for. Most firms therefore serve local clients in rand through local rails and keep any offshore business in a separate structure, which is a conversation for your bank and your advisers rather than for us.

Practically, local card acquiring and instant EFT dominate deposits, and clients expect an immediate reflection in their account balance rather than a next-day batch. Elsewhere on the continent mobile money is the default rail, which we cover in the M-Pesa and African payments piece and more broadly in local payment methods. Card declines in emerging markets are a permanent tax on badly built checkouts, so approval rates deserve real attention. Our CRM reconciles each rail separately into one client ledger, and never holds the money itself.

Languages, hours and how firms staff up

South Africa runs on GMT+2, which puts Johannesburg one hour ahead of London in winter and level with the European morning. Your desk covers the London open and the New York open in a normal working day, and gold and indices volume lands squarely in your afternoon. English is the business language, with Afrikaans, Zulu and Sotho common in support conversations, and firms selling north into the continent add French and Portuguese.

The usual structure is a South African operating company with the authorisation and the local desk, sometimes paired with an offshore entity for non-resident clients. Firms doing that often look at the islands, which is what the Mauritius page and the Seychelles page cover, and the full set sits on the locations index.

Next step

Book a call and we will go through your authorisation route, your payment rails and what the first 24 hours after go-live look like. Or text us and ask the difficult question before you commit to a meeting.

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

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 South Africa, and none is needed: the platform is delivered and managed from our own clustered servers, so a firm in Johannesburg 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 Johannesburg 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

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