Singapore-based startup Spark Systems is building a new trading platform to make foreign exchange trading in Singapore more cost effective and faster for investors. According to a report by The Strait Times the startup has raised $5 million in funding from an undisclosed source and is planning to beta-test the platform with a major hedge fund, early next year. It has recently opened its office at Fintech hub Lattice80 located in the Central Business District.
Wong Joo Seng Co-founder and CEO, Spark Systems, said,
When we were dealing with firms whose trading volumes were in excess of several trillion dollars per year, total transaction costs can be $6 million to $7 million per trillion. This means that about 40 cents of every dollar earned is used to pay the market operator.
With many Singapore trading firms routing orders to Tokyo and even London or New York, the milliseconds in delay can mean rejection of orders and bad pricing. Spark Systems aims to eventually develop a Singapore-based foreign exchange marketplace, said Wong. It will do this by building private platforms for hedge funds and the bankers they work with, and then linking these platforms to create a network. Such platforms entail high transaction costs, and also there is also no common one linking up all buyers and sellers. He added that Spark exists because they can do the same job cheaper, better and faster, as they look forward to modernize the Singapore FX market.
Spark Systems also received a grant from the Monetary Authority of Singapore and plans to bring its platform to the market by the middle 2017. The Founding team has its history in the financial sector. The COO Jason Wang Kee Huat was formerly the Head of Institutional Sales at KGI Ong Capital and CTO Tingsong Ye built a trading algorithm for the hedge fund Pine River Capital Management.
