The LSE Directory / CFD and forex brokers
BDSwiss is an online forex and CFD broker founded in 2012 as the licensed brand of Keplero Holdings Ltd, later renamed BDSwiss Holdings PLC. It gives retail clients leveraged access to currency pairs, stock indices, commodities, individual share CFDs and cryptocurrencies through MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 and its own browser based WebTrader, plus iOS and Android apps. Account tiers run from a cent or classic account with deposits from around $10 up to raw spread accounts for higher volume traders, and the platform layers in third party tools such as Autochartist and Trading Central for charting and signals. The broker's business has changed shape twice. It launched in 2013 as a binary options operator on the SpotOption platform, moved to CFD and forex trading via MetaTrader 4 in 2016, and dropped binary options entirely in 2018 once ESMA restricted the product for EU retail clients. A second, regulatory driven shift followed its loss of UK and EU retail market access: the group repositioned around offshore licenses, principally the Financial Services Commission of Mauritius (license C116016172), the Seychelles Financial Services Authority (SD047) and the Mwali International Services Authority in Comoros, and added a UAE Securities and Commodities Authority Category 5 license in June 2024 to expand in the Gulf. It has since vacated its Limassol office and today markets itself to retail traders across the MENA, LATAM, APAC and African regions rather than the UK or EU. The regulatory retreat is documented in specific enforcement actions. On 5 August 2021 the UK FCA ordered BDSwiss Holding Plc, trading as BDSwiss, Swissmarkets and BDS Trading, to stop all regulated and marketing activity toward UK clients, close open positions and return client money, after finding that 99 percent of its UK customers had been onboarded through overseas entities with no UK authorisation. On 27 July 2023 the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission fined BDSwiss Holding Ltd EUR100,000 for non compliance with initial margin and risk warning rules; the group's Cyprus licensed B2B liquidity unit, Viverno Markets Ltd (the renamed BDSwiss Holding Ltd entity), was later suspended in October 2024 and had its investment firm license revoked in May 2025 after six months of inactivity and governance shortfalls. Most recently, on 26 August 2025 the Commercial Court of Bern ruled that BDSwiss AG, the group's Zug registered holding company, had to drop the word "Swiss" from its name and remove the Swiss cross from its logo, finding that only two of its 228 employees were based in Switzerland and that it held no Swiss financial services license despite trading on Swiss branding. The holding entity was renamed BDS Markets and adopted a green backed flag logo, though the BDSwiss brand name and the bdswiss.com domain remain in everyday use. The ruling followed a period of internal turnover, with the group's chief marketing officer and chief sales officer both departing in 2024 amid a wider restructuring.
