In the mid February 2021 Metaquotes informed all clients that they are changing some important business aspects of their offer. The company decided to modify their pricing for White Labels and MT5 Server products from license to subscription based model. Namely they have waived off the license fee for all their products which previously varied from 20 000 to 250 000 USD for MT5 Server and setup fees for MT4/MT5 White labels which cost 5000 or 7500 USD. This change has resulted for sure in increasing initial affordability of Metaquotes products for new brokerage companies. However the monthly fees have increased significantly, as now brokers are forced to always take all the platforms in the package (web, mobile, desktop) which is much more expensive. For example WL clients who used to have desktop and mobile terminals (the most popular setup) were paying just 2000 USD, and if they would like to start now they would need to pay 4000 USD for the whole package together with a web terminal which was very unpopular before. Similar situation concerns MT5 White Labels which now always costs 3000 USD per month for the package of all platforms compared to 2000 USD before the change, if the broker just chose desktop and mobile.
Full MT5 Server cost starts now from 5000 USD per month for 1000 accounts basic package, which is a very affordable price for new brokers. However each broker needs to be aware that this doesn’t include all the features which are mostly needed to run a brokerage such as feed, bridge & liquidity connection, CRM, payment gateways, PAMM/MAM solution and many more, which are usually provided by the WL providers in the package. Clients who decide also to buy the MT5 server license need to have their own hosting and IT/trading team to configure and manage the server, so the 5000 USD monthly fee is not the full cost, which is needed to develop a successful brokerage. Of course it is possible to outsource these services to external technology providers, but these are additional costs, which need to be added to the monthly budget.
Therefore it is worth considering which option is the best to start a broker business: White Label with all needed features or full license server. Even if a broker started with simple White Label solution it is quite easy to migrate to full license using embedded MT5 migration tools when the right time comes
Another thing which Metaquotes has changed during the last months is the compliance policy, which concerns new clients especially MT4/MT5 White Labels. It was not communicated directly via any particular announcement, however now Metaquotes is much more strict in accepting new WL clients. Previously it was possible to order a White Label using companies registered in different countries such as the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore etc without having any license or business categorization. Now, Metaquotes requires to present at least business documents which will confirm that the company is allowed to conduct financial services in particular jurisdiction. It means that there are now very few countries which can be used to register a company for Metaquotes White Label, one of it is Saint Vincent and The Grenadines. Even if a client has already for example a working MT4/MT5 white label registered on a UK company, he cannot migrate it to another provider or order a new White Label for it anymore unless it has a proper license. Apart from the changes in company requirements, Metaquotes now verifies also validity of all the contact data provided by the broker such as telephone number, email address, website or domain ownership.All these changes in compliance policy probably was caused by many scam companies which were using reputable jurisdictions to lure and mislead their clients.
As you can see it is very important to know better the business aspects of running a brokerage company to make wise decisions before you start. Therefore in case you don’t have enough knowledge it is worth having some consultants or trusted company which can help you to choose the most suitable option to start your own brokerage business.