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Is accepting cryptocurrency always a good thing for a company, and which companies are better off avoiding cryptopayments altogether?

What is a cryptocurrency payment gateway?

A cryptocurrency payment gateway is a service that allows merchants to accept cryptocurrency as a payment method. Crypto gateways make it easy for businesses to accept cryptocurrency as payment alongside fiat money and settle transactions in real time.

Crypto gateways are growing in popularity due to the widespread use of cryptocurrencies and the security benefits they provide. Many companies are starting to accept cryptocurrency payments to get ahead and enter new markets. 

With UpTrader Pay already built into the UpTrader CRM, every broker can automate cryptocurrency payments in literally two clicks. If your company uses another CRM, integrating UpTrader Pay crypto gateway is just as easy because it's a standalone product.

So what are the pros and cons of accepting cryptocurrency?

Most often, brokers accept payments directly to their own wallets. This way, they are able to completely avoid some sensitive issues. For instance, cryptocurrency transactions exclude chargebacks and risks associated with intermediaries. Every broker has probably encountered a situation where large amounts of money are stuck with payment intermediaries for months and sometimes years. In some cases, this money is never returned and the broker bears reputational and financial costs.  

The difficulty with accepting payments in cryptocurrency may arise for licensed brokers who avoid dealing with cryptocurrency so as not to anger the regulators. The best way for them to de facto not deal with cryptocurrency is to use cryptocurrency gateways such as BitPay, PayPal, and Coinbase Commerce. In return, companies get fiat currency into their bank accounts and stay within legal bounds. This way, companies can offer customers alternative payment methods and eliminate uncertainty related to cryptocurrencies.

Accepting cryptopayments automatically

Manually accepting crypto payments may overburden your financial department, because processing these transactions is quite a task: you need to compare the requested amount in the CRM and in the wallet, then you need to identify the customer who made the request by the amount they requested, and often two sums are not the same. Then you have to call your customers to find out who transferred the money, and so on. Of course, it is better to automate the process, and we have already written a piece on how to do this:  

Connect crypto gateway or how to start accepting crypto without stress.

Last year MetaQuotes suspended selling White Label that caused the forex industry to start looking for alternatives. Most sensitively it was perceived by small brokers who can’t afford to spend a couple of extra thousands dollars for the MetaTrader 5 Full license. Therefore the good alternative for them turns out to be с-Trader White Label, whose policy is pretty mild and price is reasonable. However MetaQuotes remains the main trading platform provider and it still sells the Full License MetaTrader and companies are still looking forward to the opportunity to work with MetaTrader. It’s still possible, but the price for the base version has been increased from $5000 to $7500. For those companies who can’t handle this price, a good alternative is c-Trader White Label.

Please learn more about c-Trader and MetaTrader Full License from our previous article.
Or contact us directly to get more information. 

We regularly get requests from prop firms for CRM integration. Let's discuss the difference between a Proprietary Trading Firm and Retail Trading.

What exactly is a proprietary trading firm also known as a "prop shop"?

Proprietary trading happens when a prop firm hires a prop trader to trade company funds. That is, a prop firm is a type of financial company that hires a trader who will capitalize on the company's money acting on its behalf. Such companies became widely known after the financial crisis of 2008 when their speculations with huge sums on the market of such derivatives as CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), credit default swaps and other synthetic instruments had quite a serious effect on the mortgage market which eventually collapsed and led several major banks to bankruptcy. Back then, almost any competent trader could become a proprietary trader and get access to big money management.

Key differences

The key difference between retail trading and proprietary trading is that a retail trader trades with their own funds, while a prop trader trades with the funds of a company which specifically hired such a person to capitalize on the firm's assets and make even more money. In this case, the prop trader takes up to 70% of the profits for their speculations, while the company itself gets 30%, even though it provides the money and takes the risk. 

Prop traders working for prop firms are usually subcontractors, as opposed to traditional brokers hired by the company. Funding in such companies is shared among all the prop traders who trade with the firm.

Who to trade with: retail or prop firms?

When trading with a retail broker, the trader transfers their own funds to a trading account. The broker in this case provides leverage, thus increasing the trader’s turnover, a platform, and access to the trading instruments, normally charging commission for it. The trader is still limited by their own capital, but on the plus side, they don’t have to follow trading rules set by the firm, since they own the funds they trade with. 

As for prop trading, it has wide prospects of managing huge amounts of company's capital and thus receiving potential profit, but the trader must observe strict rules. 

Getting into trading

Here, everything is simple: retail trading is open to all. The broker sets the minimum deposit amount, the trader deposits the account and starts trading. A prop trader, unless they have a reputation, needs to prove their abilities. To do that, the trader is given a trading account, usually with demo funds, where they trade for a certain period of time. At the end of this period, the result is evaluated and a decision to provide real capital for management is made. 

Brokerage and prop firms often earn their money by training newcomers. There is nothing inherently bad in it if the company does not try and trick you by promising a fortune for depositing your account, but simply provides a training service for a fixed fee.

SCAM 

Prop trading market is full of scams, as well as the retail trading market. So before you decide to fund your account, you should weigh the pros and cons and research the company’s background online. Do not fall for marketing campaigns that require you to make rash decisions. For companies, it is a way to get fast money from new clients, for a trader, it entails a high probability of rapid capital loss. The rule “If you think that the offer is too good to be true, perhaps it is not worth to risk your money” always works.

Dear partners and colleagues, 
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2023!

The holidays are the perfect time to tell you how much we appreciate you as our very important client. We keep working hard to help your business thrive. We wish that all your plans and goals come true in the next year. We hope the whole year will be productive and bring impressive results.

Wishing you and your family peace, love, and joy at Christmas and always.

Happy Holidays from everyone at UpTrader!

Wishing you a Happy New Year and following the tradition, we are now looking back on the work the UpTrader team did in 2022 and making plans for the future. The year itself was turbulent and brought even more uncertainty into the world than the pandemic. Financial markets continue to react to events in spurts and financial institutions, brokers, and traders continue to make and lose money on these reactions. Meanwhile, the UpTrader team has been working hard to implement new and improve existing Forex CRM features all year long to provide brokerage firms with the best customer service system possible!

The motto for 2022 has been "less is better". 

The team focused on improving the existing features and the stability of our flagship product, UpTrader Forex CRM. Here is a list of features we would like to highlight:

Copytrading

The copytrading service in UpTrader Invest was partly reworked, and its stability has significantly improved. We also implemented all the features that were included in the product architecture. It should be mentioned that copy trading is very popular with newcomers on financial markets because it allows you to get good trading results by copying from experienced traders.

Customer service 

Improving customer support is one of our top priorities. We have already done a lot of work to improve the interaction between our technical support and clients by launching a unified support portal. We have improved on communication channels, time to response, and ticket processing speed, and made the processes as transparent and predictable as possible. The feedback from clients is extremely positive, but we would still like to work on certain aspects until they are perfect. Working on them is part of our plans for next year.

Integration with cTrader

The second most popular trading platform after MetaTrader, cTrader, is now integrated with UpTrader CRM. We are very happy to see that more and more brokers are choosing to work with cTrader. First, variety is good. Second, cTrader's policy is to keep order execution transparency under control. They keep execution records and allow traders to view them. It is impossible to manipulate prices because they do not allow editing the databases. We think that the desire for transparency is a positive market trend.

In addition, the UpTrader team has done a lot of preparations for the launch of big and even sensational services next year. Here is a brief announcement of the expected releases.

Free UpTrader Forex CRM Installation 

The idea behind this service is based on the best current practices and an obvious market need. At the moment, there is no other CRM for Forex brokers on the market that integrates the CRM with your website without a team of developers setting it up. We decided to tackle this problem. Next year, UpTrader clients will be able to install Forex CRM themselves for free in just a few steps. Thanks to this service, brokers who already have a website and MetaTrader will be able to instantly launch the CRM. The brokers could test core CRM features without any fee as well as accept and serve new clients right away.

Sales module

The development of the sales module is almost completed. Next year, we will be able to offer brokers a multi-functional module tailored to the specific needs of the Forex broker's sales department. It will have a very convenient lead distribution and matching panel as well as detailed client profiles. The module includes a well-thought-out lead distribution system, user-friendly interfaces, sales department performance management system, client history archive and much more.

Two-factor verification 

Brokers want to protect their clients from any risks associated with their accounts as much as possible. To do this, they often want to introduce additional security in the form of two-factor authentication. It is an extra layer of security which ensures that only the client can access their account even if someone else got ahold of their password. 

Stay tuned for more news, and don't miss the most interesting releases!