Brokerage as a service

The partner owns the customer, the brand and the app. The provider owns the regulated part behind them. lemon.markets in Berlin, a BaFin-licensed investment firm, provides brokerage infrastructure for clearing, execution, compliance, operations and custody through a single API. Such a provider in turn works with other institutions: at the launch of lemon.markets, Finance Magnates named BNP Paribas as custodian, Deutsche Bank for payments to end users and Tradegate for access to the exchange.

The model is the securities version of crypto as a service, where a specialist runs custody and trading of crypto assets for a bank. Both rely on the same split: the customer interface stays with the brand, and the license and the back office stay with the provider.

Selling securities to retail customers needs a permission from BaFin. A partner without one can work under the provider's license. Solarisbank used this route in its brokerage offer for the neobroker fina: the partners performed investment brokerage as tied agents of Solarisbank, through one API, with stocks, ETFs, funds and ETF savings plans. lemon.markets holds its own license under the German Securities Institutions Act, covering principal broking, portfolio management, safekeeping and investment broking, and offers its partners omnibus, BPO and fully disclosed models.

The rules for neobrokers and their order flow are on Finance Loop's page on neobrokers in Germany.

Upvest, supervised by BaFin and by the UK's FCA, describes end-to-end investment infrastructure across brokerage, settlement and custody, delivered through a cloud-native investment API, and names N26, bunq, DKB and Revolut among its clients. lemon.markets, according to dwpbank, supports fractional trading and real-time processing for ETFs, shares and funds.

Crypto is the next asset class on these platforms. Upvest lists crypto as coming soon, and dwpbank, the owner of lemon.markets, offers bitcoin and ether to banks and savings banks through its separate platform wpNex.

dwpbank processes securities for about 1,000 German banks and savings banks. In 2025 it bought lemon.markets to add a neobrokerage solution to its full-custody service for banks, as its press release explains (in German). lemon.markets supplies the lean custody account for neobrokers, and the WP3 platform of dwpbank the global custody account for banks. Both brands stay on the market, so a fintech can buy brokerage as a service from the same group that runs the securities business of most German savings banks.

Brokerage as a service is a model in which a licensed provider runs the securities business behind an app, from execution to custody, and the app or bank offers investing under its own brand through an API connection.

A white label broker usually means a finished trading front end under the buyer's brand. In brokerage as a service the partner builds its own front end and the provider supplies the regulated back end through an API.

A partner can work as tied agent under the provider's license, as fina did under Solarisbank, or use a provider such as lemon.markets that holds its own license as an investment firm.