XTB secures portfolio licence and launches Spanish spot crypto

A phone showing cryptocurrency prices, illustrating XTB's spot crypto launch in Spain.
Photo by Alesia Kozik on Pexels

XTB has won approval from the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) to manage investment portfolios, and has added spot cryptocurrency trading in Spain. The KNF approved the portfolio-management permit unanimously on Friday. The Warsaw-listed broker has not said which products it will offer under the new authority.

In Spain, customers can buy and sell more than 40 crypto assets directly, rather than using CFDs for exposure, according to XTB's Spanish website. Spain is the broker's third spot crypto market, following Chile and Cyprus. The launches extend activity beyond CFDs, which still account for almost all of XTB's trading income.

Portfolio authority meets client scale

A portfolio-management mandate allows a licensed firm to make investment decisions within terms agreed with a client. The assets potentially in scope have grown alongside XTB's stock and ETF business: customers held PLN 50.31 billion with the broker at the end of June, including PLN 23.35 billion in stocks and PLN 20.02 billion in ETFs. Those holdings sat across almost 1.49 million active accounts.

The permit comes from the regulator that fined XTB PLN 20 million in a decision dated March 30, relating to its assessment of clients' experience before offering CFDs. In February, Chief Executive Omar Arnaout said he wanted CFDs to account for about 70% of revenue, down from around 95%, as the company diversified.

Noble Securities analyst Mateusz Chrzanowski described the approval as a longer-term route to a broader offer and more revenue per client, StockWatch.pl reported, while rating it neutral for the shares. FM Intelligence calculations show revenue grew about ninefold between 2019 and 2025, even as profitability per client dropped 76%.

Spain's crypto rollout expands

XTB has introduced spot crypto in stages. Following a Cyprus spot crypto licence in December 2025, the broker began trading there in the first half of 2026 with more than 35 assets. Chile followed in August with 46, while Spain's selection exceeds 40.

The Spanish service runs through XTB Limited, XTB's Cyprus-based subsidiary, which is licensed by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation. Customers trade in dollars, with transactions starting at $2; they cannot move coins into or out of the service.

Spain represented 5.3% of organic visits to retail FX and CFD broker websites in the third quarter, the sixth-highest share among countries, according to FM Intelligence's heat map. XTB has also used Spain to introduce options on 110 US stocks and ETFs in April and redesigned Investment Plans in July, when it launched them there alongside Germany.

Polish customers still cannot trade spot crypto through XTB. Poland has not adopted the law supplementing MiCA, and President Karol Nawrocki vetoed versions in December 2025, February 2026 and June 2026. If the legislation remains unadopted, the broker could serve Polish customers through its Cypriot subsidiary, Finance Magnates reported in August. XTB's preliminary third-quarter results and online conference are scheduled for Thursday.

What an operations team should check

For portfolio management, operators should establish which products and client mandates XTB plans to support. What changes will be needed to allocation controls, client reporting and reconciliation once those details are known?

For the Spanish crypto service, teams should confirm how dollar-denominated trades from $2 are represented in records and how the restriction on coin transfers affects customer support and operational procedures. The source does not specify the portfolio products or the systems used for either launch.

Operators should also ask how portfolio decisions will be reflected in client account records, and what reporting will distinguish managed portfolios from clients' existing stock and ETF holdings. For crypto, they should confirm how trades and balances are reconciled when customers cannot transfer coins into or out of the service. The available information does not explain how either workflow is implemented.