Alpaca’s MiFID II passport now covers 29 European Economic Area countries, giving the US brokerage infrastructure firm a single regulatory gateway into markets from Germany and France to Iceland and Liechtenstein. The authorisation runs through a Spanish entity supervised by Spain’s securities regulator, the Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV), which oversees compliance with the EU’s MiFID II directive, the 2014 rulebook that governs how investment services are authorised and operated across the bloc.
MiFID II passporting lets a firm licensed in one EU member state extend those permissions across the bloc without filing separately in each country. For Alpaca, one approval in Spain theoretically unlocks the whole EEA, covering close to 500 million people.
What the Alpaca MiFID II Passport Actually Covers
The Spanish hub sits inside a three-part regulated structure. In the UK, Alpaca operates through a Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)-regulated entity formed when it acquired infrastructure firm WealthKernel last year and rebranded it as Alpaca Europe. In the US, the parent business runs through Alpaca Clearing, a wholly owned subsidiary of AlpacaDB, Inc., which is a member of FINRA and SIPC (the US investor protection scheme).
The European entity’s Broker API is built to be MiFID II and CNMV-compliant, letting partner firms plug into account opening, custody and trading tools without building their own regulated infrastructure. As Karan Shanmugarajah, chief executive of Alpaca Europe, put it: partners can access ‘regulated, localized investment services through a single European entity.’
The US self-clearing side of the business adds a layer that most white-label trading providers lack. As a carrying broker-dealer (one that holds customer assets, maintains accounting records, and sends trade confirmations on partners’ behalf), Alpaca Securities LLC handles regulatory reporting for partner firms rather than passing that burden back to them.
On the European side, the company is still early. Its equities business went live on Germany’s Xetra exchange only in April, with other trading venues expected to follow. The passport gives Alpaca the legal scaffolding; building actual client revenue across 29 markets is a separate task.
How Alpaca Stacks Up Against Upvest and Its Rivals
The clearest incumbent in Alpaca’s path is Upvest, a Berlin-based infrastructure provider that has spent several years embedding investment capabilities into European banking and fintech apps. Upvest’s client list includes Revolut, N26 and Santander’s Openbank, and the firm says it processed more than 100 million orders in 2025.
Upvest closed a $125 million fundraising round this year, valuing the company at €640 million, up from €360 million when it last raised money in December 2024, according to Finance Magnates. According to Bloomberg, the round comprised $90 million in equity from investors including Sapphire Ventures, Tencent Holdings, Bessemer Venture Partners and BlackRock, alongside a $35 million credit facility the firm was in talks to secure.
Upvest’s structural advantage is its regulatory breadth. It holds all BaFin licences for both securities and crypto brokerage and custody, making it one of the few providers in Europe able to offer business-to-business clients both asset classes through a single infrastructure. In 2025, it also broadened its product range through a collaboration with Clearstream, giving partners access to a wider range of mutual funds.
Traditional brokers have been moving onto Upvest’s rails too. IG Group used the platform to launch stock trading in France in late 2025, and CMC Markets signed on for a multi-currency equities service in Germany this year. US-based DriveWealth and Denmark’s Saxo Bank are also active in the region with competing white-label systems.
Alpaca is approaching from a different angle. Where Upvest grew from a German regulatory base, Alpaca is leading with a US self-clearing operation and a fresh MiFID II passport, rather than years of embedded European client relationships.
The Broader Picture for Alpaca
Europe is one part of a wider geographic push. Alpaca describes itself as a self-clearing broker-dealer with more than 10 million brokerage accounts and clients across more than 40 countries, backed by more than $320 million in funding. It raised $150 million in January at a $1.15 billion valuation.
Early this year the company agreed to acquire a broker-dealer in India’s GIFT City (a special economic zone designed to attract international financial firms), adding a fourth licensed region alongside the US, UK and EU. It has also provided the trading infrastructure behind US equities services for crypto exchange Kraken and Southeast Asian trading app Gotrade.
Yoshi Yokokawa, the firm’s chief executive and co-founder, has said Alpaca wants to ‘make regulated investment infrastructure easier to access, easier to integrate…’. The EEA passport delivers the legal reach to make that pitch to European banks and fintechs. Whether those institutions choose Alpaca over a provider already embedded in their technology stack is the commercial question the next few quarters will answer.
