Brokerage as a Service in 2025: From Equities to Everything

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The last cycle proved that brokerage could be abstracted into APIs. The next cycle proves something larger. Brokerage is becoming a permission inside a multi-asset wallet, orchestrated by AI, funded by stablecoins, and available globally by design. The winners will not only route orders. They will orchestrate identity in, liquidity out, and explainability in the middle.

I have shipped products in payments and digital identity long enough to recognise when a stack turns from product to permission. Brokerage is there now. It used to be a destination app. Today, it is a capability that any product can call, wherever the user already is.

What changed in 2025

Three shifts define this moment. First, settlement speed accelerated. The United States moved to T+1 in May 2024, which compressed funding and operations windows and forced orchestration to become real-time. See the SEC announcement and DTCC’s T+1 hub. Second, AI moved from back office triage to front office orchestration. Firms now need prompt logs, action logs, and human-in-the-loop controls. FINRA’s materials on AI set useful guardrails: applications overview and risk and supervision themes. Third, compliance became a product. The EU’s emerging AI framework reinforces explainability and audit. A clear primer is the EU AI Act Q and A.

From equities to everything

Users now expect a single wallet to hold equities and ETFs, options and funds, stablecoins, and tokenized treasuries. Idle cash should earn a transparent yield, with same-day or next-day liquidity, and with clear disclosures. This is no longer theory. Franklin Templeton’s OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund supports USDC conversions, which makes sweep-like flows practical. BlackRock’s tokenized liquidity fund BUIDL pushed the category into mainstream institutional conversations. Market trackers like RWA.xyz treasuries provide transparent issuance and asset data in one place.

Stablecoins now act as the universal funding rail. Visa documents how stablecoin settlement can reduce weekend friction and improve treasury operations. See Visa’s stablecoin hub. The blueprint is straightforward. User funds locally, treasury converts to a regulated stablecoin, portfolio is allocated, and redemption occurs back to local rails on withdrawal. The user sees local currency and familiar methods. Treasury sees programmable settlement and predictable timing.

AI in the loop, compliance as the product

The most important user interface shift is intent. A customer says, move twenty percent of idle cash to short-term treasuries, cap drawdown at five percent, never sell my top three holdings, pause during earnings. The agent translates intent into a plan, shows route, fees, and risks, then executes under policy. To do this safely, you need clear governance. Build Know Your Agent controls that bind specific permissions to specific accounts, set thresholds and time windows, and require human approval for sensitive steps.

For a practical compliance baseline, combine FINRA’s AI materials with internal policies for model risk and supervision. Use an event stream for every decision point, from suitability check to order placement. If a regulator or customer asks why something happened, you should be able to replay the reasoning with timestamps and inputs.

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One BaaS, used globally

A single brokerage fabric can serve users in many countries if you separate the orchestration hub from regional spokes. The hub exposes one API surface, one developer experience, and one risk dashboard. The spokes provide broker of record, clearing and custody, tax and statements, and local product rules. A policy engine compiles jurisdiction-specific rules at runtime based on the user’s location and profile.

Funding and settlement need special care. With T+1 in core markets, cash management must anticipate obligations and pre-position liquidity. Stablecoin rails can reduce delays for markets that do not share banking hours. The next gains will come from AI that predicts where liquidity will be needed and moves funds just in time.

Data residency and privacy deserve equal attention. Keep sensitive data in the region, ship only the metadata you need for global analytics, and maintain explicit mapping between people and wallets for tokenized instruments.

What does global look like in practice

Scenario 1. A family in Ireland allocates to United States bonds. A modern BaaS stack can let an Irish resident fund in euros, pass KYC and suitability, and allocate to a compliant wrapper of United States Treasuries inside the same wallet. The simplest route for many retail savers is an EU-domiciled UCITS fund that holds Treasuries, for example, the iShares USD Treasury Bond UCITS ETF. For regulated on-chain options, tokenized money market products like Franklin Templeton’s OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund can be offered where eligibility rules permit. The orchestration does the heavy lifting: it presents the right product per profile, fetches the required disclosures, such as a PRIIPs Key Information Document where applicable, and logs the user’s acknowledgement. For reference on PRIIPs disclosures, see the European Commission’s overview of Key Information Documents. Funding can arrive via local rails or via stablecoins for instant settlement, following the patterns described in Visa’s stablecoin materials. The user experiences a single wallet and clear choices. The provider satisfies regional product, tax, and disclosure rules behind the scenes.

Scenario 2. A global family invests together in accounts for children. A BaaS ledger with family features allows parents, grandparents, and godparents in different countries to contribute to a child’s account in a compliant way. Contributors pass KYC or KYB in their own region, then fund using local rails or a permitted stablecoin. The platform applies gift and contribution limits by jurisdiction, issues receipts, and keeps a transparent audit trail for the family and for regulators. This is the philosophy behind NestiFi’s approach to intergenerational investing: simple collaboration, clear education, and compliant flows. For context on the mission, see the Irish Times profile “The future of pocket money? NestiFi lets families invest together for kids”. In practice, a BaaS stack enables invitation links, contributor verification, flexible asset menus such as diversified funds and cash-like instruments, and cross-border payouts when the child later redeems. Stablecoin settlement shortens funding delays for relatives abroad, while the orchestration layer handles statements, tax forms, and eligibility.

Who is building the future already?

When you are ready to evaluate partners, there are many credible options. In the United States, Alpaca Broker API, DriveWealth, Apex Fintech Solutions, and Tradier cover account opening, trading, clearing, and a growing range of assets. In Europe, Upvest and WealthKernel package MiFID-grade onboarding, custody, and trading behind modern APIs. If you want global instruments on day one with a proven backbone, Saxo OpenAPI and white label, and Interactive Brokers white branding are pragmatic paths.

Under the hood, clearing modernisation matters. Clear Street is rebuilding prime brokerage around cloud native systems, programmatic financing, and real-time operations. On the digital asset side, Zero Hash offers turnkey crypto and stablecoin infrastructure, Fireblocks provides policy-based wallet and settlement orchestration, Anchorage Digital focuses on qualified custody with trading, and BitGo remains a widely integrated custodian for institutions.

For inspiration on global deployments

Review how consumer brands integrate. Revolut’s public help center explains that U.S. stock trading for European users is provided by a carrying broker, a pattern that many consumer apps follow. See Revolut’s stocks help page for a representative example of disclosure language.

Product patterns that work

Three patterns deserve a place on your roadmap.

Goals, rules, autopilot Users set goals and guardrails, the agent proposes portfolio moves, the human approves, the system executes. Build a conservative default. Show the route, the fees, the expected impact, and the exit.

Sweep to tokenized treasuries Makes idle cash earn by default, with clear opt-in, daily accrual, and rapid redemption. Anchor this to instruments that users can understand. Point to Franklin’s fund page for education, and make your own disclosures plain.

Instant funding, predictable settlement Add stablecoin rails to reduce time to first funded trade. Visa’s materials are a good foundation for operational design and partner due diligence. Link to the stablecoin hub in user-facing education so customers understand why funding feels different.

Decision framework for buyers

When I assess a provider, I start with the breadth and depth of assets. Do they cover equities, ETFs, and options today, with a credible path to fixed income and money market instruments. Then I check clearing and custody maturity. Apex’s developer portal and Clear Street’s clearing posture are instructive. Next is the global path. If I need the same experience in Dublin, Dubai, and Dallas, can I achieve that with one API surface, policy files per region, and a clear data residency plan. Digital assets posture is next. I want stablecoin settlement and tokenized cash equivalents treated as first class, not a sidecar. Finally, I test AI readiness. If the provider cannot expose structured logs and permissions that make agent workflows safe, I look elsewhere.

What to measure next

The right metrics prove that the fabric is working. Time to first funded trade by region. Advice to execution conversion for AI proposals. Recurring contribution rate and sweep participation to tokenized funds. Execution quality and slippage by audience segment. Compliance resolution times and false positive rates. If the pipes are good, liquidity moves with less friction, and users trust the journey.

Risks and how to mitigate them

Regulatory drift will change how you onboard and which products you can offer. Treat rules as versioned code and ship updates. Vendor concentration can expose you to operational outages. Set up secondary clearing or custody options and test failover. Model error is inevitable. Keep a human in the loop for first orders and for material policy changes. Market outages will happen. Communicate clearly, queue gracefully, and recover predictably. Users forgive outages they understand and that resolve cleanly.

Predictions for the next 18 months

One, brokerage permissions will live inside multi-asset wallets that also handle stablecoin flows. Two, tokenized treasuries or equivalent cash-like instruments will become the default sweep option in many BaaS programs. Three, AI-ready audit will be a buying criterion for enterprises and boards. Four, global rollout will be achieved by composition, a mix of white label, regional investment APIs, and crypto as a service behind one experience. Five, the biggest returns will come from boring excellence, tax, reporting, corporate actions, and reconciliations that scale across countries and assets.

Closing thoughts

Brokerage is no longer a destination. It is a permission. The companies that thrive will treat brokerage as an orchestration problem, get identity right, make cash earn, route with integrity, and let an explainable agent do the heavy lifting under policy.