OTC Crypto Exchange Development: From RFQ to Settlement

Big OTC crypto trades tend to run into the same problems: on public order books, size gets punished with slippage; “just split the order” works only up to a point and adds timing risk; and once you’re done trading, the real work begins — settlement, counterparty exposure, and compliance. When teams attempt to handle all of this with brokers, chat threads, and spreadsheets, quoting slows down, controls become shaky, and post-trade becomes a cleanup process.

That’s the point of OTC development. A solid OTC platform keeps big trades off the public order book and runs them through a straightforward RFQ flow. It defines who can request a quote, how the price is set, what gets checked before approval, and how the trade ultimately settles. When it’s built well, the process doesn’t depend on constant manual coordination — it carries the trade from request to settlement and continues to function as volume grows.

If you’re planning to outsource OTC crypto exchange development services, it’s a good idea to read this guide before choosing a contractor. Use it as a checklist for vendors: you’ll quickly understand who’s truly capable of putting together a functioning platform from start to finish, and who’s just showing off a pretty interface that requires manual work from an administrator.

What is an OTC crypto exchange?

An OTC crypto exchange is built for trades that should stay off the public order book. You do not post size into the market and hope it fills cleanly. You request a quote, get a price, accept it, and then settle the deal on controlled rails.
That is the whole point of OTC — control over execution, control over who can trade, control over settlement, and records when a compliance team asks questions later.

In a real build, the simple flow needs rules at every step. RFQs require TTLs and access rules, while quotes require pricing logic, spreads, and inventory checks. Acceptance needs limits and approvals. Settlement needs custody rails and reconciliation. Reporting needs trade tickets and audit logs that stay consistent.

How OTC differs from other models (in practice)

Benefits of OTC crypto exchange development

Public order books do not hide size. Once an order is large enough, it affects the price and attracts attention. Execution becomes harder to control.

OTC trading operations are processed within a closed workflow. Quotes are processed through requests for quotes or negotiations, after which the trade is concluded under specific terms and conditions. This structure is what makes OTC trading platforms valuable for live trading.

In 2025, desks are being pushed toward this model because liquidity is spread across multiple venues, and reporting expectations are becoming tighter.

Why OTC helps, and what you ship

OTC platform models (what you’re actually building)

When discussing the development of an OTC trading platform, most people overlook the specific type of platform. The architecture of OTC trading platforms varies. They fall into two categories: who bears the risk and where the liquidity will come from. These decisions determine the overall cryptocurrency exchange development cost, legal structure, and level of inventory management complexity.

Axis 1: Principal vs. agency

This determines your relationship to the trade and your risk exposure.

• Principal model (dealer/market maker): Your firm acts as the counterparty. You hold inventory, quote buy and sell prices, and take market risk if prices move between the quote and execution. This requires highly sophisticated, real-time inventory management, hedging, and enough capital to run the desk. High risk, high reward.
• Agency model (broker): Your firm acts as a middleman, serving as an intermediary between buyers and sellers. You source pricing from external liquidity providers (LPs) and route the client’s order without holding the asset. Risk is typically lower, usually limited to execution and counterparty failure, but your margin is derived from fees or a small spread on the sourced quote.

Axis 2: Liquidity Sourcing

This decision is critical because it dictates the complexity of your entire connection layer and, ultimately, the quality of your execution.

• Bilateral (Single-Dealer) Model: The simpler approach. The platform sources all pricing either from its own inventory (principal model) or from a single prime broker (agency model). The architecture is easy to maintain, but you are entirely dependent on that one source for execution quality and competitiveness.
• Aggregated (Multi-Dealer) Model: This significantly increases the complexity. The platform connects to multiple Liquidity Providers (LPs), centralized exchanges, and often internal trading desks to dynamically find the best available price. The trade-off is substantial: you now need sophisticated routing, normalized APIs, and robust fallback logic. The definite upside, however, is superior liquidity and highly competitive client pricing.

When evaluating a project, what matters is not its market potential but rather the model within which we accept market and product risks.

Core features of an OTC crypto exchange

Before you estimate cost, decide which version you’re building. An MVP gets you live and processes real RFQs. An enterprise build is what you need when volume grows, and you can’t rely on manual work to keep things running.

From discovery to pilot: OTC build stages

OTC projects fail when teams focus on the trading screen and forget everything around it. The real product is the full process: quotes, approvals, settlement, reporting, and the rules behind them. If those pieces don’t work together, you end up with a nice UI and the same manual work behind the scenes.

This is what an end-to-end build typically looks like when planned as a platform, rather than a patch.

Step 1: Understand what we’re building (product framework)

Start by writing down the basics: who your clients are, where you’ll operate, which currencies and pairs you’ll support, and what limits you want in place. Then describe how a trade will happen day to day, whether it goes through a dealer in chat or through a self-serve account. Finally, map the steps from RFQ to confirmation, settlement, and close.

Result: a short document with requirements and a list of mandatory features (must-haves).

Step 2: Set up the “rules” in advance (legal and compliance)

Decide in advance how you check clients and companies (KYC/KYB), how you filter risks (AML), how you check sanctions, the limits you impose, and what you consider suspicious. Decide what data you store and what reports you download.

Result: agreed-upon policies (KYC/AML/sanctions/limits) and a clear flowchart of the transaction process “as it should be.”

Step 3: Designing how it will work (design and architecture)

Design the key screens (client dashboard, admin panel) and think through how the system processes the transaction step by step. Consider the quotes and integration module separately: liquidity, blockchain providers/nodes, banks/payments. Don’t forget about logs and access rights.

Result: Screen prototypes + technical diagram + task list (backlog).

Step 4: Building an MVP (minimum viable product)

MVP development has a basic start: registration and verification, application, quote, confirmation, statuses and notifications, admin panel, basic wallets/payments. Don’t try to do everything at once.

Result: An MVP capable of conducting a real transaction in a controlled manner.

Step 5: Checking reliability and security (tests and audits)

Test the load, verify calculations, secure the API, configure secrets and access permissions, enable monitoring, and conduct a pen test/audit. Run “what to do if something goes wrong” scenarios.

Result: a stable and secure version, ready for pilot.

Step 6: Launching the pilot and moving into production

Start with a small group of clients, set up support and compliance procedures, learn how to quickly resolve incidents, improve the UX and integrations based on live feedback.

Result: the first production release and clear work procedures for the team.

Step 7: Scaling and improving

Add new networks and currencies, automate risk control, enhance pricing, expand reporting capabilities, increase fault tolerance, and expedite ticket processing.

Result: a mature OTC service that can handle growing volumes and requirements.

Tech stack options

Security and compliance (non-negotiable for OTC)

It’s best to ensure security and compliance from the start. Post-launch rework is almost always painful: you have to rebuild everything on the fly, and every “minor” change entails new checks, new access permissions, and new exceptions.

Start with access and responsibility. Different roles should have different rights, and actions that change risk or move funds require re-approval. This applies to limits, whitelists, and invoicing. The larger the volume, the more often these parameters are checked retroactively, so it’s best to ensure from the start that the system doesn’t allow for “just click-and-drag.”

Encryption shouldn’t be a “deferred” step, but a constantly running background process. Encrypt traffic between the client and services, encrypt databases and storage, encrypt backups. And don’t turn the intermediate stage into a place where “it could have been easier.” This is when problems usually migrate to the production environment.

Monitoring isn’t just a question of “is the service running?” In the OTC market, it’s important to notice unusual behavior: sudden spikes in bid requests, repeated quote requests, unusual logins, changes in payout settings, and settlement rollback chains. All of this often seems insignificant until it becomes a serious incident.

Finally, you need a log that allows for quick recovery. Logs should be designed so that they cannot be undetected retroactively. Record key events: bid requests, quotes, approvals, cancellations, limit changes, and payouts.

MVP vs. enterprise: OTC build cost in practice

People always want one number. With OTC platforms, that’s rarely possible, because the cost depends on what you’re building. The biggest drivers are the scope of features, the number of integrations, the level of control required, and the degree to which you want to automate versus having operations handle it.

So it’s usually easier to talk in ranges.

MVP range

Ballpark: $250k–$700k for a first production MVP.

Assumptions behind this range:

• One OTC desk, one legal entity, limited geography
• 1–2 vendors for custody and KYC/KYB (and a basic screening provider)
• Web client portal + admin console (dealer/compliance/ops)
• RFQ flow + quote + confirm + basic order lifecycle
• Semi-manual settlement (ops-driven checks, manual bank steps if fiat is involved)
• Basic audit trail, basic reporting exports
• Sensible security baseline (MFA, RBAC, maker-checker on critical actions)

What MVPs typically spend time (and money) on are integration, permissions/approvals, and the “last mile” around transaction logs and audit trails. The user interface rarely takes center stage.

Enterprise range

Ballpark: $1.5M–$5M+ depending on how far “enterprise” goes.

What typically pushes it into this bracket:

• Multiple legal entities/desks, shared or segregated liquidity
• Multi-jurisdiction compliance requirements and different onboarding rules
• Streaming quotes, smarter pricing, tighter latency targets
• Heavier compliance automation (risk scoring, case management, ongoing monitoring)
• More robust reporting (regulatory-style exports, reconciliation packs, audit-ready data)
• Redundancy, disaster recovery, and higher uptime targets

This is also where platform work is evident: event-driven architecture, replayable audit trails, operational tooling, and the ability for “everything keeps working even when a vendor is down.”

What a reliable OTC looks like

Most OTC platforms don’t fail because pricing is off. They fail in the daily grind: a request gets missed, an approval stalls, someone changes a detail in the wrong system, and later nobody can untangle what happened. The platforms that hold up keep the process simple and minimize the risk of errors. They reduce the number of handoffs, establish clear rules within the process, and ensure that finance and compliance departments can obtain reliable data without having to track down people.

Hybrid OTC + liquidity aggregation

If quotes depend on who’s online, prices will fluctuate. It’s simpler and more reliable when quotes are collected automatically: you retrieve prices from multiple sources, format them accordingly, apply your own spread and limit rules, and then display them to the client. As a result, quotes arrive faster and appear more stable.

Multi-asset OTC for treasury teams

A deal can be “closed” in trading, but in finance, it’s not considered closed until all accounts are reconciled. Therefore, working platforms immediately provide what treasury needs: roles and limits, clear trade logs, daily summaries, and reconciliation files. This means less manual cleanup and less chaos at the period close.

Institutional desk modernization

Many workstations start with chat and Excel. Someone agrees on terms in a discussion, someone else copies the details into a spreadsheet, and then operators are left to figure out what actually happened. This is feasible with small volumes, but quickly becomes unbearable as activity ramps up. The solution is quite simple and not at all aesthetically pleasing: give each trade a clear lifecycle, require a second approval for important steps, and log every key action. This won’t earn you any demo rewards, but it will make daily trading easier.

Top OTC crypto exchange development companies

We reviewed each OTC crypto exchange development company using open-source signals and publicly available materials, then compared them side by side so it’s easier to shortlist vendors. The focus is on what matters for bringing OTC products into production — security, compliance readiness, depth of integration, proven end-to-end execution, and the ability to support the platform post-launch.

Conclusion

Creating an OTC cryptocurrency exchange isn’t so much about “adding a request for quote screen” as it is about streamlining the entire trading process — from pricing and approvals to settlements, reconciliations, and audit reporting. Problems typically arise in the same places: manual data transfer, inconsistent control mechanisms, and post-trade work that occurs in chat rooms, spreadsheets, and people’s heads.

If you’re planning an OTC cryptocurrency exchange, start by choosing a platform model (principal or agency, bilateral or aggregated), as this determines your risk profile, compliance burden, and depth of integration. Then, build an MVP as a closed-loop solution — onboarding new clients, requesting quotes, settlement tracking, and logs — that won’t break down in the future. When volume starts to show up, “enterprise” mostly means two things: more automation and more resilience. That’s where multi-source pricing, heavier compliance workflows, tighter approvals, proper reconciliation, and real ops tooling come in, so the desk can keep running even when one of your vendors goes down.

When evaluating a vendor for outsourcing OTC cryptocurrency exchange development services, ignore the glossy demos. Instead, demand proof of effective security controls, compliance, deep integration experience, and reliable post-launch support. This specific due diligence determines whether the platform can handle real trading volume, or if it will simply devolve into a modern interface hiding the same manual work you started with.