For decades, the path to global wealth for retail investors in Turkey was obstructed by high fees and fragmented platforms.1 While institutional investors have navigated international markets with less friction, individual Turkish citizens often find themselves restricted to a limited set of financial tools. This was not just a gap in infrastructure and technology; it was a gap in financial accessibility.
The Turkish financial landscape is uniquely dynamic. In recent years, the region has navigated significant macroeconomic shifts, including high inflation and currency volatility, which has increased the demand for diversified global assets.2,3 For many investors in Turkey, access to global markets, including US equities, options, and other financial products, has become an important way to diversify portfolios and explore opportunities beyond domestic markets.
We recently spoke with Ege Eryılmaz, the VP of Business at Midas, about how Midas transformed from a promising startup into a dominant force in the region’s fintech landscape by engineering a product-first experience that prioritizes clarity and speed.
Breaking Down Barriers with Product-First Design
Founded in 2021 by Egem Eraslan, Midas was built on a singular, ambitious mission: to make investing accessible, affordable, and seamless for everyone. Whether someone is investing for the first time or actively managing a portfolio, they believe the experience needs to feel intuitive and reliable.
The challenges the Midas team had to overcome to achieve this were multi-faceted. For years, investing in global markets felt overly complex and out of reach. Many traditional institutions structured global access across separate platforms or account types, making the experience feel fragmented. Investors often had to open accounts across multiple systems to access local equities, US markets, or digital assets. Today, investors increasingly expect a more unified, intuitive experience when accessing global markets.
"We focus on removing the traditional barriers to investing, starting with offering very low-cost access to global markets. We also place a strong emphasis on simplifying the user experience through product design," explains Eryılmaz. "Before Midas, retail investors in Turkey largely accessed US markets through banks, with high commissions and fragmented user experiences. We entered the market with pricing that was significantly more affordable and a product that was much easier to use.”
Through this approach, Midas has scaled into one of the largest retail investing platforms in the region. “In just a few years we’ve grown our user base from tens of thousands to close to 4 million users, with nearly $4 billion in assets under management (AUM),” continued Eryılmaz.
With their recent Series B of $80 million, the most capital ever raised by a Turkish fintech company, Midas looks to consistently launch products, scale them quickly, and build a platform that users rely on across various market cycles.3
Building and Scaling Products Across Retail and Sophisticated Traders
While product experience was important, Midas recognized that it needed more than just an intuitive user interface; it needed a partner with the technical rigor to support massive scale and complex product sets. They found that partner in Alpaca.
Leveraging Alpaca's Broker API, Midas launched US stocks in 2021. Since then, product adoption has been exponential: "Today, Midas holds over half of the US equities market share in Turkey, making it the clear market leader and reflecting strong retail penetration and high user retention," said Eryılmaz.
Midas has continued to launch several products with Alpaca, including options and 24/5 trading in 2025. This expansion has focused on gradually supporting more active and sophisticated trading features which have become essential for the modern Turkish investor:
- High-Yield Cash: A regulated feature that makes idle capital productive, ensuring that every dollar in a user's account is working toward their financial future.
- US Options: Strategic tools that help empower active traders to implement sophisticated strategies, providing a level of functionality previously reserved for professionals.
- 24/5 Trading: This allows users to engage with US markets nearly around the clock, aligning their trading activity with global news cycles rather than being limited to traditional market hours.
“We’ve built leading product experiences across multiple asset classes and consistently expanded what our users can do on the platform. Offering high-yield accounts empowers our users to keep growing in periods where they may be less active,” explained Eryılmaz. “Options were strategic for us as we started building features more intentionally for active and experienced traders, giving them access to tools that support more advanced portfolio strategies. 24/5 trading, meanwhile, has been important from an accessibility perspective, allowing users to engage with global markets beyond traditional trading hours.”
Since the launch of options, adoption has been strong, particularly among more experienced users. As of today, options trading on Midas averages around 500,000 contracts per month, indicating strong usage from their audience.
In addition to the products offered with Alpaca, Midas also provides access to Turkish equities, mutual funds, crypto, and derivatives. The variety of financial tools address different investor needs, but all share the same expectations around affordability, speed, and ease of use.*
“Our users don’t separate their financial lives into local and global silos. They want access to different asset classes and markets within a single, streamlined experience so they can apply different strategies and build more comprehensive portfolios,” stated Eryılmaz. “Offering more products means users can handle more of their investing in one place, which naturally increases how often they use the platform.”
As they scale, Midas’s focus continues to prioritize product expansion, growth, and reliable infrastructure.
Building a Resilient, Integrated Infrastructure Foundation with Alpaca
The philosophy underlying the partnership between Midas and Alpaca is the shared commitment to developing tools from the ground up. This includes engineering core systems from scratch to ensure they can scale alongside the evolving needs of the market.
"Alpaca's API-first infrastructure made them a natural partner from day one. Their technology allowed us to move quickly, launch US stocks early, and continuously expand our offering without compromising stability,” said Eryılmaz. “Just as important, Alpaca understood how we wanted to build the product and the pace we needed to move at, which made it a strong long-term fit for us.”
Eryılmaz continued, “the Alpaca team has consistently been responsive, technically strong, and open to evolving alongside our needs. As we’ve moved into more complex products and higher volumes, that level of partnership has been critical.”
"The Midas team has built a platform that bridges cultural and economic gaps, honoring the realities of the Turkish community while providing world-class access and product experiences,” said Yoshi Yokokawa, Co-Founder and CEO of Alpaca. "The impact Midas has made in the region has been groundbreaking as we all are witnessing it. We look forward to supporting their infrastructure needs as they continue to massively scale, and working collaboratively towards more innovation."
The partnership between Midas and Alpaca represents a collaborative effort to architect a more inclusive financial future. By combining global market access with strong infrastructure and a proactive growth mindset, we are working together to ensure that the next generation of Turkish investors has the tools they need to navigate the complexities of the global economy with confidence.
Looking Ahead: Engineering the Future of Wealth
Midas's growth has been historic. For years, Midas has been product-focused, engineering strong tools and a reliable user experience, supported by performance marketing, partnerships, and word of mouth. This approach led them to achieve healthy engagement and retention while keeping the product experience at the center of growth.
For the next stage of growth, Midas looks to invest more aggressively in marketing. “While the product remains core, we’re placing greater emphasis on marketing and growth initiatives, including brand building and increasing Midas’s visibility across different channels,” explained Eryılmaz. “The aim is to complement our product strength with a more structured and consistent growth strategy.”
Additionally, their product roadmap for 2026 and beyond is focused on deepening everyday usage for retail investors while also expanding their offering for more sophisticated traders.
For retail investors, Midas is looking to expand access to European equities. Additionally, they want to add features like Midas Card and easier money transfers. For the sophisticated audience, Midas looks to introduce Turkish derivatives (VIOP) and build a web-based trader and API access for advanced users who want more flexible trading interfaces. Within their crypto product, Midas is also looking to add more advanced token selection and trading systems to support more active strategies.
The overarching vision for Midas is to evolve from an investment app into a comprehensive financial ecosystem that supports every facet of a user’s economic reality. Together, Midas and Alpaca continue to pave the way for expansion, proving that product-led financial tools with the right infrastructure partner can dismantle the barriers to global markets once and for all.
Contact Alpaca
About Alpaca
Alpaca is a US-headquartered, self-clearing broker-dealer and a global leader in brokerage infrastructure APIs providing access to stocks, ETFs, options, fixed income, and crypto. Alpaca delivers embeddable finance solutions for tokenization, fully paid securities lending, high-yield cash, 24/5 trading, Shariah-compliant investing, and more. Today, Alpaca powers over 9 million brokerage accounts across hundreds of fintechs and institutions in 40+ countries with over $320M in funding.
About Midas
Founded in 2020, Midas is Turkey’s leading investment platform. It offers access to Turkish and US equities, mutual funds, and cryptocurrencies through a single platform. Since launch, Midas has grown rapidly and now serves more than 3.5 million users.
Midas enables trading on US exchanges at a competitive flat fee of $1.50 per transaction, while permanently eliminating all commissions and account-related charges, including clearing and custody fees, for Borsa Istanbul. In addition, the platform provides real-time market data at no cost to its users.
Sources:
- Turkey’s Midas raises $80M to disrupt retail investing with advanced trading and security upgrades
- The Impact of Exchange Rates on the Turkish Economy
- Domestic Investors Turn Their Eyes to Foreign Equity Funds
*Midas also provides access to Turkish equities, mutual funds, crypto, and derivatives that are not offered through Alpaca
The content of this article is for general informational purposes only. All examples are for illustrative purposes only.
Alpaca and Midas are not affiliated and are not responsible for the liabilities of others.
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