Exchanges are an ideal way of making markets more efficient. Not just in the financial space but also others such as environmental. They make it easier for companies to raise funds and manage investors, bring transparency and efficiency into markets and attract a far greater number of buyers to consider the products being sold.

Any operator establishing an exchange needs to grapple with the dilemma of the cost of the platform with the features that traders and issuers want, against the costs that traders and issuers are willing to bear. The major security exchanges such as ASX, Nasdaq etc have set a benchmark of user experience that traders expect nowadays. The large size of their franchises provides them with the revenue needed for the infrastructure to deliver this experience.

However operators starting a new exchange, or running a small exchange, are unlikely to have the revenue for such infrastructure. In the past, their options were either to use a lower cost web based platform which does not have the same trading capabilities as the major exchanges - or use the same infrastructure and run at a loss.