Citi’s Velocity 3.0 has lengthy been among the many most established single-dealer FX platforms, however 2025 provided a recent take a look at of its reliability. After the sharp fall within the greenback that adopted President Donald Trump’s 2025 ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs on imported items in April, volatility spiked and liquidity thinned throughout the market. Many programs faltered below the pressure however Citi’s didn’t.
Ayesa Latif, Citi
“In moments of maximum volatility, we at all times see a flight to high quality,” says Ayesa Latif, Citi’s international head of FX merchandise. “By high quality, purchasers imply the depth of liquidity, the power of market-making, and the soundness and resilience of the platform.” Through the Liberation Day occasion, that high quality was examined in actual time. Velocity continued to ship uninterrupted pricing and execution as purchasers turned to the platform for liquidity they might depend on.
Velocity 3.0’s underlying design explains that consistency. It runs a number of reside situations worldwide, permitting what Latif calls “seamless intraday cutovers, the place the shopper gained’t even expertise a glitch”. Behind the scenes, the structure has been refined to enhance knowledge circulate and commerce processing – strengthening resilience below stress and rushing up execution in regular circumstances.
That robustness helped draw flows at a time opponents noticed declines. Citi reviews a 43% year-on-year improve in common day by day volumes on Velocity throughout April 2025, whereas a peer group of rivals fell again. The efficiency bolstered a status constructed throughout earlier market shocks: that Velocity stays open when others don’t.
Stability, although, is simply a part of its enchantment. Over the previous yr, Citi has refocused Velocity 3.0 on modularity and integration, an strategy Citi calls “eFX à la carte”. The platform’s micro-services structure lets Citi tailor performance to the consumer, moderately than forcing purchasers right into a single template. Latif says the objective is “to satisfy purchasers the place they wish to be met, and the way they wish to be met”, whether or not which means onshore liquidity, derivatives execution or analytics embedded in their very own workflow.
Operational threat and compliance checks
That adaptability has grow to be more and more helpful as purchasers prolong into restricted and rising markets, the place op threat is excessive and entry usually fragmented. “Purchasers fear about whether or not they’ll get their FX achieved on time,” Latif notes. “We’ve constructed automated workflow options in order that they don’t face failed settlements – they usually get a extra clear fee as nicely.”
Citi has coupled these workflow instruments with compliance checks that robotically verify whether or not customers are licensed and documented to commerce in every market. “Our checks will be certain that purchasers have a appropriately declared commerce function to satisfy commerce reporting necessities, and our onboarding checks will make sure the entity is licensed to commerce in that market.”
Citi’s native market build-out has been in depth, including benchmark fixings, regulatory workflows and buying and selling for non-deliverable forwards (NDFs) throughout a number of key jurisdictions. These capabilities enable purchasers to handle FX exposures electronically throughout a number of jurisdictions whereas satisfying native reporting and taxation guidelines.
Totally automated, absolutely built-in
Velocity 3.0’s integration layer has additionally developed. Regional banks now stage orders immediately into Citi’s order guide in a single day, asset managers join immediately by way of their order administration system (OMS) to scale back brokerage prices, and company treasuries can add publicity recordsdata for computerized validation by the platform. When some purchasers requested for a substitute for screen-based execution, Citi responded with a neighborhood markets software programming interface.
“Purchasers needed the choice to not log into Velocity in any respect,” Latif says. “Now they will originate and stage orders from their OMS immediately into Velocity – absolutely automated, entrance to again.”
Elsewhere, Citi has enhanced Velocity’s investor and issuer FX product with a brand new “international window”, offering entry each to restricted and unrestricted markets by way of a single authorized entity. Alternate-traded fund and overlay instruments automate FX timing round safety trades to scale back slippage. Due to a brand new digital onboarding system, shopper setup occasions have been diminished from weeks to hours, with greater than 80% of requests accomplished in below a day.
Expanded execution
Execution expertise continues to develop. Velocity now helps new order sorts and expanded algorithmic execution with higher transparency and analytics. In FX choices, Citi has begun a multiyear infrastructure improve below the venture title Evolve.
Wanting forward, Latif expects deeper automation and a continued shift in direction of onshore market electronification. “We’re bringing our e-trading groups nearer to our conventional voice market-makers to construct a extra automated digital price-distribution mechanism,” she says. “It’s the identical evolution we now have seen within the money, NDF and choices markets over the previous decade – making pricing and workflows extra digital and clear.”
Citi was named Finest single-dealer platform on the FX Markets e-FX Awards 2025.
