A VFSC licence is the fastest legitimate way many founders reach the market, and it is also the point where the shopping list starts. Approval in hand, a firm still needs a platform, a price feed, an onboarding flow, a payment stack and something to reconcile the whole thing against. That gap is what SINGUARD fills.
To be exact about what we are: a software company. No office in Port Vila, no Vanuatu entity, no licence, no local staff. We build the platform and the CRM, we host and run them, and our team travels to the industry events where most of these relationships start. Your firm holds the licence and the client money.
Who runs a firm from Vanuatu
Mostly two groups. Brokers taking international clients who want a licensed vehicle without an onshore capital burden, and prop firms selling evaluation accounts who need a corporate wrapper that payment providers and platform vendors will accept. A third group holds Vanuatu alongside a second authorisation elsewhere and routes clients by country.
All three arrive with the same technical requirement: a branded terminal their clients will actually use, and a back office that survives an audit. The Vanuatu VFSC licence explained covers the regime itself, and offshore broker licences puts it beside the alternatives.
The regulatory backdrop, described not advised
The Vanuatu Financial Services Commission administers the dealers in securities regime that most Vanuatu brokers operate under. It sets the licensing conditions, the reporting obligations and the criteria for the people running a licensed firm. Vanuatu has also spent recent years tightening its financial services legislation in response to international AML review, which has raised the substance expected of licensees.
Two practical consequences. First, the regime is cheaper and quicker than an onshore licence, but the trade-off shows up in banking and in how some client markets treat you. Second, an offshore licence does not exempt you from the rules of the countries your marketing reaches. Soliciting clients in a jurisdiction that requires local authorisation is a problem regardless of where your entity sits. Regulated versus unregulated brokers and AML basics for trading firms are the honest reading on both points. Speak to your own counsel about your specific case.
SINGUARD holds no licence anywhere and is not party to yours. We are never the broker, the bank or the adviser. Your firm carries the VFSC obligations, the client funds and the compliance file.
What SINGUARD provides
The eTrader platform on web, iOS and Android, with its own market data feed included rather than billed separately by a third party. The Broker CRM for onboarding, KYC workflow, deposits, withdrawals, account tiers, spreads, markups, IB structures and reporting. The Prop Firm CRM for challenge design, the rules engine scoring drawdown and consistency, certificates, payouts and a full audit trail.
Everything is fully managed. Hosting, patching, monitoring and support sit with us. Once your licensing and paperwork are in place, the environment goes live within 24 hours, configured with your branding, your instruments and your rules.
That audit trail matters more for an offshore licensee than for anyone else, because when a trader disputes a breach in public, the record of exactly which rule fired and on which tick is the only thing that settles it.
Payments, banking and the Pacific timetable
Banking is the honest weak point of an offshore structure and nobody should sell it to you otherwise. Correspondent relationships take time, card acquiring for a Vanuatu licensed CFD business is high-risk merchant work with approval rates to match, and a single provider is a single point of failure. Most firms here end up with a card processor, a crypto rail and wire, plus a separate arrangement for payouts. Plan the redundancy before launch, not after your first decline spike. High-risk merchant accounts, crypto payments and payout rails compared cover the trade-offs.
Vanuatu sits at UTC+11, which puts Port Vila hours ahead of most of the client base. In practice almost no Vanuatu licensee staffs its support desk from the islands. The operating team is usually in Dubai, Cyprus, Kuala Lumpur or wherever the founders live, and the entity is a booking and licensing vehicle. That is fine, and the software does not care where the operators sit, but it does mean two things: your platform has to be genuinely multilingual for the client languages you sell in, and your rules engine has to run correctly through hours when nobody is watching.
How firms here are structured
The familiar shape is a Vanuatu licensed entity, a registered agent handling the local requirements, an operating team abroad, and technology outsourced entirely. That last part is a deliberate choice: building a terminal and a feed in house costs more than most firms will earn in their first two years.
On our side, Alex Onta built eTrader with Roman Onta on the design and leads the platform. Alex Onta & Roman Onta built the Broker CRM and the Prop Firm CRM together and carry compliance, payments and corporate structuring between them.
Talk to us
Book a call or text us. We will show you a live environment and answer the awkward questions about payments and audit trails rather than the easy ones. Our other markets sit under locations, including Belize City and Panama City.
Where SINGUARD is based, and where we meet firms in Port Vila
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 Vanuatu, and none is needed: the platform is delivered and managed from our own clustered servers, so a firm in Port Vila 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 Port Vila 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 Port Vila?
No. SINGUARD has no office, entity, licence or representative in Vanuatu. We are a software company that serves firms licensed there, working remotely, and we meet clients at industry events.
Who regulates dealers in securities in Vanuatu?
The Vanuatu Financial Services Commission, the VFSC, administers the dealers in securities regime under which most Vanuatu-based brokers operate. The application, the capital and the ongoing conditions are your firm's responsibility.
Do payment providers accept a Vanuatu licensed broker?
Some do and some do not, and it varies by provider and by the client countries you serve. Most Vanuatu firms run several providers in parallel rather than relying on one, and plan for card approval rates below what an onshore licence would attract.
Can a Vanuatu firm launch quickly?
The software is live within 24 hours once your VFSC licensing and company paperwork are in place. The licence timeline itself is set by the regulator and by your own advisers, and we make no promises about it.
Related Reading
The Vanuatu VFSC licence explained
What the dealers in securities regime covers, the conditions attached, and where firms get caught out.
RegulationOffshore broker licenses
The main offshore regimes side by side, and what each one costs you in banking and client trust.
Payments & ComplianceHigh-risk merchant accounts
Why trading firms sit in the high-risk bucket, and how to keep approval rates from collapsing.