Neobanks Are Entering Trading: What CFD Brokers Must Do

TL;DR: CMC Markets’ UK Head Chris Cheverall has mapped out exactly where the CFD industry is heading: neobanks want trading products, 24/7 markets are becoming standard, and brokers that can’t deliver institutional-grade API infrastructure will lose ground to those who can. For operators running acquisition budgets against these structural shifts, the implications are immediate.

Neobanks Are Not a Trend — They’re a Distribution Channel

CMC’s partnership with Revolut, announced in 2024, is the clearest signal yet that neobanks are becoming the next major retail CFD distribution layer. Revolut, with 70 million customers across 160 countries, started offering retail CFDs in just three markets. By late 2025, it had quietly expanded that offering to 29 countries — almost entirely through CMC’s back-end infrastructure.

That 100% mobile-first user base in the neobank segment compares to about 70% for CMC’s own direct-to-consumer clients. The behavioral gap matters. Neobank users expect seamless in-app experiences with no friction between their banking dashboard and their trading interface. Brokers built around desktop-first platforms or clunky third-party integrations are already behind.

Cheverall is explicit: “All of those neobanks require scalable institutional growth solutions tailored to their platform’s needs.” Translation — the opportunity is not in building your own neobank. It’s in being the infrastructure that powers trading inside the neobanks that already exist. For operators thinking about forex acquisition strategy, the neobank channel represents a pool of pre-qualified, financially active users that no paid media budget can replicate at scale.

B2B Revenue Is No Longer a Side Business

CMC posted £182 million from B2C clients and £111.3 million from B2B clients in its last fiscal year. That B2B number — more than 60% of the B2C figure — is not a rounding error. It reflects a deliberate strategic pivot that most retail-focused brokers haven’t made yet.

The prime brokerage expansion — covering both cash and synthetic PB — is the mechanism. Cheverall frames it directly: “We did this so we could capture higher-value institutional clients, which will help build institutional credibility.” Prime services aren’t a separate business here; they sit alongside and reinforce the retail operation.

For operators evaluating where to concentrate resources, this split signals something important. B2B and institutional revenue has lower CAC, stickier retention, and compounding network effects through partner platforms. Brokers who still think of B2B as a secondary channel are reading the revenue trajectory backwards.

Gold Volatility Exposed Which Brokers Have Real Infrastructure

The precious metals rally through early 2026 did more than drive record volumes — it separated operationally capable brokers from those who couldn’t hold margin levels stable under pressure. CMC’s funds-in-transit credit line, which allows institutional clients to maintain and manage exposures during extreme intraday volatility without being forced to unwind, became a genuine differentiator when gold’s directional run stressed exchange margins across the industry.

What Cheverall describes next is worth noting for any operator running paid acquisition campaigns during volatile macro periods: client behavior shifted. Traders stopped evaluating brokers purely on spreads and started scrutinizing holding costs, margin dynamics, and infrastructure reliability. The product conversation moved from “best price” to “best infrastructure.”

CMC responded by launching weekend gold trading — adding to weekend crypto products already in market — and Cheverall’s view is unambiguous: “Weekend trading is a thing that is here to stay.” For operators still treating weekends as off-hours, that’s a structural gap in availability that competitors are actively filling.

What This Means for Forex Operators

The CFD and forex space is compressing. Cheverall’s forecast: “In the next five years there will be fewer but larger, technologically sophisticated brokers.” That consolidation isn’t happening to operators who grow — it’s happening to operators who fail to differentiate on infrastructure, product range, or acquisition efficiency before the window closes.

Three immediate implications for forex operators running serious budgets:

First, the acquisition funnel is getting noisier. As neobanks bring CFD trading to tens of millions of existing banking customers, the competition for intent-driven search and paid media traffic intensifies. Operators who haven’t run a rigorous marketing audit on their funnel in the last 12 months are likely leaving cost-per-acquisition savings on the table.

Second, product positioning has to move beyond leverage. CMC’s Spectre product — a non-leveraged, tax-efficient spread bet — drove more website traffic in one quarter than CMC had seen in any previous quarter after a single campaign. The message is that there’s a segment of retail traders who will convert on tax efficiency and no margin calls, not on leverage ratios. That’s a targeting opportunity that most forex operators are ignoring.

Third, mobile-first isn’t optional anymore. With 100% of neobank CFD users on mobile, operators whose landing pages, onboarding flows, and audience targeting aren’t built around mobile behavior are paying for clicks they can’t convert. The infrastructure expectation set by neobank apps has raised the floor for what retail traders will tolerate.

For brokers and operators competing in this environment, the crypto and digital asset acquisition playbook is increasingly relevant to forex — both verticals are being reshaped by TradFi/DeFi convergence, weekend trading, and neobank distribution. Understanding where those lead pools overlap is no longer optional.

Regulation Is the Operational Ceiling — For Now

CMC’s planned super app — integrating traditional finance, DeFi, payments, and banking in a single platform — is already partially live. But the regulatory path is unresolved. Cheverall’s summary: “Technology is moving faster than regulation.” MiCA governs crypto assets. There is no equivalent multi-asset framework. Tokens fall under existing securities or derivative rules. DAO governance raises accountability questions regulators haven’t answered yet.

KYC and AML obligations apply regardless of how decentralized the protocol is — that’s an operational cost that doesn’t disappear just because the product runs on blockchain. For operators building toward a multi-asset or TradFi/DeFi hybrid offering, the regulatory gap between where the technology is and where the compliance framework sits is a real planning constraint, not a theoretical one.

Custody and client asset protection under decentralized protocols remains the specific area where the frameworks are least developed. Operators need legal and compliance architecture built now, not retrofitted when regulators catch up.

The Consolidation Clock Is Running

The macro picture Cheverall draws is consolidation through capability. Brokers who build API delivery infrastructure, scalable prime services, and multi-asset product ranges will absorb the clients of those who don’t. This is not a 10-year horizon — it’s a five-year window, and the neobank distribution play is already three years in.

Operators at the $10K+ monthly acquisition budget level need to treat this as a growth-or-acquisition question. Either you build the infrastructure to compete across mobile, institutional, and partner channels, or a better-capitalized competitor acquires your client base. Running efficient, data-driven campaigns through AI-powered lead qualification at the top of the funnel isn’t a nice-to-have in that environment — it’s the difference between building a book and burning budget.

The operators who move on product range, mobile UX, and acquisition efficiency in the next 18 months will be in the “fewer but larger” group Cheverall describes. The rest will be consolidation targets.

Originally reported by Finance Magnates Executives, May 2026.