South Africa and Forex: what’s coming?

Author: Petros Kalaitzis

South Africa has long been overlooked, but its rapid growth in the past few years has proven that the country, and the entire African continent, have plenty of potential.

Thanks to rising interest from traders, innovative new startups launching all the time, and large global players entering the market, South Africa is quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with.

Today’s Forex market in South Africa

In terms of Forex trading, several factors have influenced South Africa’s growth:

• Proactive regulations that aim to guarantee market freedom and protection for all participants simultaneously.
• Tech boom. With the country’s overall digital transformation, more users have access to trading, creating a larger market.
• Volatility of the national currency, although not good for the macroeconomy, works perfectly for currency trading by creating room for speculation and high profits.
• Global investors are actively investing their funds in South Africa's economy, nudging the industry to develop faster.

Tomorrow’s Forex market in South Africa

Several exciting trends are happening right now that will influence the landscape of the South African fintech market:

• Accelerated digital transformation of the entire financial system in the country.
• Mobile payments are taking over as the preferred method of payment.
• Crypto and blockchain are welcomed by the government, giving the market the confidence it needs to develop new solutions and invest in new technologies.

Overall, the prospects of the South African Forex market look bright. There are, of course, challenges, just like any emerging and highly volatile market. With the course that the government is taking, it looks like it’s doing an excellent job of balancing compliance requirements and regulations, keeping the country’s population motivated to trade more, and making it attractive to investors worldwide.

What are South African TFB clients using and loving?

Tools for Brokers has proudly worked with brokerages and hedge funds in South Africa for many years. For this article, we asked our clients and did some internal research to discover the most appreciated solutions in the TFB portfolio.

Here they are.

• Trade Processor. Not surprisingly, most of TFB’s clients in South Africa utilise our liquidity bridge and, specifically, endorse the risk management functionality that helps them avoid unnecessary troubles. One of the hits, in particular, is the backup LP feature that rolls over to the backup liquidity provider should the first one become unresponsive.
• TFB Toolbox. Another favourite for clients across Africa is our Toolbox, a single console where all TFB plugins and applications can be managed via a convenient interface. Brokers in Africa are busy and have no time to waste on mundane tasks. The Toolbox becomes a life saver where brokers can optimise their day-to-day management, ensure everything works as expected, and reconfigure individual tools on the go.
• StopOut plugin. We’ve seen a lot of volatility in the past few years, and it looks like it will continue, so the StopOut plugin is, unsurprisingly, in demand. With the plugin, brokers set up the minimum equity, and once it reaches a critical level, the tool automatically closes all orders and makes the account read-only. The plugin is a winner among prop trading firms and brokerages.
• Credit Management. The Credit Management application creates flexible campaigns for credit deposit, transfer, and withdrawal. Clients can predefine the thresholds that would trigger credit-related actions, plus it can send email notifications about all operations to help keep brokers in the loop.