Electronic trading is well established in a foreign exchange market populated by interdealer, single dealer and multi-dealer platforms, but a slowdown in trading activity has sparked a change in trading patterns and heaped pressure on incumbents.

The FX market, estimated to have a daily turnover of $3 trillion (€2.3 trillion), can be broken down into two sub-sets - business to business, where banks trade with other banks, or business to customer, where banks trade directly with hedge funds, fund managers, brokers or smaller customers.