Inside the Rush to Register as a Prediction-Market FCM

Kalshi, Polymarket, and most other exchanges already hold a Designated Contract Market designation, which lets them list and trade contracts. It does not let them hold customer funds directly for margin trading; without a Futures Commission Merchant registration alongside it, a platform can only offer fully collateralized positions, where a trader posts the entire potential loss upfront.

An FCM registration, obtained through the National Futures Association by filing Form 7-R for the firm and Form 8-R for each principal, lets a company accept customer orders, hold customer funds, and extend margin, letting a trader post a fraction of a contract's value as collateral instead. That single capability, offering leverage rather than requiring full collateralization, is the common thread behind almost every filing described below.

Kalshi affiliate Kinetic Markets became the sector's first prediction-market-linked FCM when the NFA registered it in March 2026, enabling the margin-trading rulebook amendment that took effect the following month. Polymarket followed with its own affiliate filing, PM Derivatives, on July 3, 2026, explicitly described in coverage of the filing as mirroring Kalshi's path.

DraftKings received NFA approval for its own FCM on July 14, 2026, closing the loop on a vertically integrated stack that already included its DKeX exchange and Railbird's matching technology. FanDuel has gone further than any other operator, running two separate FCMs: a 2025 joint venture with CME Group under the FanDuel Predicts brand, and a second, wholly independent filing, New Venture III LLC, submitted in April 2026 specifically to build a margin-trading capability that does not depend on CME at all.

Fanatics and Underdog followed similar logic. Fanatics paired an FCM registration approved in March 2026 with its later acquisition of an entire DCM and clearinghouse from BGC Group, while Underdog combined its own FCM, approved in January 2026, with its 2026 acquisition of Aristotle's exchange and clearinghouse, giving both companies exchange, clearing, and FCM layers under one roof.

A second group is not building a consumer prediction-market product at all. Apex Clearing Corporation, whose FCM registration predates prediction markets entirely, launched a turnkey "Apex Prediction Markets" line in February 2026 that lets any brokerage plug in white-label access to Kalshi's contracts; tastytrade became its first live client on July 27, 2026.

Alpaca Derivatives, a brokerage-infrastructure provider used by many neobrokers, registered its own competing FCM on August 6, 2026, though it has not yet disclosed which exchange it will connect to or launched a live product. NinjaTrader took a related but distinct approach in March 2026, repackaging its existing FCM, acquired via Kraken's roughly $1.5 billion purchase of NinjaTrader, as "NinjaTrader Connect," a white-label platform other brokers and fintechs can build on directly.

River Markets, a venture-backed startup that raised $8.5 million in an August 2026 round led by Haun Ventures, is pursuing the same layer from a different angle: rather than an FCM for retail brokerages, it is building what it calls the first prime brokerage for prediction markets, aimed at hedge funds and professional traders who want a single terminal routing orders across Kalshi, Polymarket, and other venues. Its own FCM application remains pending.

A third group is moving toward FCM registration from the opposite direction: sweepstakes-casino and sweepstakes-sportsbook operators whose existing state-by-state model is narrowing under legislative pressure. Fliff and Onyx Odds' affiliate both filed FCM applications on the same day, August 12, 2026, and Rebet filed its own application in June, all reflecting the same underlying calculation, that federal derivatives registration offers a more durable footing than the sweepstakes-law workaround they have relied on so far.

PrizePicks and Sleeper made the same bet earlier and from a fantasy-sports base rather than a sweepstakes one. PrizePicks became the first fantasy-sports-affiliated operator to receive FCM registration in September 2025, and Sleeper's application was contested enough that the company sued the CFTC in September 2025 over what it called an improperly stalled review, dropping that suit once the NFA approved its registration in January 2026.

None of these filings change who can list a contract; that still requires a DCM designation, a separate and far more involved process. What they change is who can extend a customer credit against a position, and the volume of filings, at least fourteen since March 2026 across three distinct business models, is a reasonable proxy for how many companies expect margin trading, not just spot access to contracts, to matter to where prediction-market volume ultimately settles.

For a young market to have already produced two competing turnkey-FCM providers in Apex and Alpaca, a dedicated prime broker in River Markets, and a wholesale infrastructure pivot in NinjaTrader Connect, on top of the affiliate FCMs run by the exchanges themselves, suggests the intermediation layer of this industry is consolidating around a familiar set of questions: who clears, who extends credit, and who bears the risk if a customer's position moves against them before it settles.