DriveWealth captures per-trade economics

Owning clearing and settlement turns DriveWealth from a thin software vendor into the economic center of each trade. Instead of only charging for API access, it can earn execution fees, payment for order flow, partner markups, and custody related economics while controlling onboarding, routing, books, records, and post trade operations. That also makes integration faster for partners because one vendor handles the full workflow behind the app screen.

• In practice, a partner sends one API call for a $5 stock purchase, and DriveWealth handles KYC, fractional share math, order routing, clearing, custody, confirmations, tax forms, and settlement. Each of those steps is a place where a non integrated vendor stack would split economics across multiple providers.
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• The closest proof point is Alpaca. Its move to self clearing through DTCC membership was explicitly tied to capturing more value per trade and removing third party clearing fees. The same logic explains why DriveWealths integrated model supports higher revenue per transaction than a pure API layer sitting on top of another clearer.
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• Compared with Apex, which prices across clearing, custody, subscriptions, and asset based fees, and Clear Street, which uses one ledger to cross sell financing and custody, the pattern is clear. Firms that own more of the trade lifecycle have more ways to monetize the same customer flow and more control over service levels.
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The market is moving toward more self clearing, not less. As embedded brokerage platforms add retirement accounts, options, margin, international access, and round the clock trading, the winner will be the provider that can keep stacking new products onto the same regulated back end and keep more of each dollar of trading activity inside its own system.