FTX US acquires embedded stockbroking platform Embed

FTX US has acquired Embed Financial Technologies Inc., including its white-label brokerage services and API provider to broker-dealers and registered investment advisors.

Embed is a FINRA, DTC, NSCC, Nasdaq, and IEX member clearing firm that provides an embedded finance platform for brokers. The firm has been servicing FTX Stocks ever since it was announced in late May.

FTX Stocks offers access to fractional trading of stocks and options. It is currently available for select customers in private beta and will be made available to all domestic customers of FTX US later this summer.

Embed and FTX US to provide white label brokerage

Embed will FTX US in its goal to expand the financial services it offers to US customers, and will enable it to route, execute, clear, and custody all customer equities and options accounts and trades through the use of Embed’s infrastructure and licensure.

In addition, Embed and FTX US share a common goal to provide white-label brokerage services to other businesses, applications, and customers, the firms announced.

Brett Harrison, President at FTX US, commented: “As I mentioned when we launched FTX Stocks, our new equities and ETF trading platform, our goal at FTX is to provide a comprehensive trading application that spans all asset classes. For equities and options trading this necessarily includes services such as clearing and custody, and our partnership with Embed showed us that they have built excellent technology and infrastructure to provide these services. We’re looking forward to working together to integrate both our teams and our technology as we continue to build FTX Stocks.”

Michael Giles, Founder and CEO at Embed, said: “When we originally began working with the FTX US team as their clearing partner, we soon realized how similar our respective cultures were. Our teams have a shared vision and dedication to building from the ground up to democratize access to financial services, and Embed’s latest securities technology is the ideal complimentary to FTX’s leading crypto solutions. This combination enables the combined group to bring an industry-leading securities and crypto solution to market, which was previously sorely lacking, for the benefit of FTX US customers and exciting new B2B clients.”

Embed has built a modern clearing & custody business from the ground up. Besides FTX US, Embed also powers Xiggit and Nexus.

Michael Giles founded Embed in May 2020 after leading various startups/projects in fintech over the years, including Third Party, a leading investing API platform for U.S. financial markets powering dozens of fintech companies (AWS for investing).

Square acquired Third Party, which was subsequently renamed Cash App Investing in 2019. Following the acquisition, he remained the CEO of Cash App Investing LLC until December 2019.