"Japan was chosen as a market completely untouched by the prop trading boom,” David Varga, the CEO of Fintokei, told FinanceMagnates.com. “It's not easy to get in."
That was three years ago. Today, Fintokei declares it has paid out more than $15 million to Japanese traders, with one individual logging 120 separate payouts from the platform and another collecting over $360,000 in total rewards.
The Czech prop trading firm, backed by CFD broker Purple Trading, entered Japan in early 2023 when prop trading had virtually no name recognition in the country. What followed was, by Varga's own admission, a slow burn. But one that is now paying off in a way few prop firms anywhere in the world can match.
Prop Firm Entering Market That Nobody Else Wanted
Japanese traders didn't embrace the concept quickly. They rarely do. "They are generally very slow at adopting new things from abroad," Varga acknowledged in a previous interview with FinanceMagnates.com.
Fintokei's response was to out-localize every competitor: native Japanese-speaking support, local marketing partners, in-person events, and a product structure deliberately shaped to meet Japanese trading habits and expectations.
The effort has produced a community of thousands of prop traders across Japan, with average individual payouts approaching $4,000. More tellingly, Japanese traders are outperforming their European counterparts on both the frequency and value of payouts, a result Varga attributes to the discipline and precision Japanese retail traders bring to the markets.
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When Varga spoke to FinanceMagnates.com in October 2024, he revealed that 60% of the platform's then-20,000+ traders were based in Japan, and was blunt about the competitive gap:
"There are a few companies that, as far as I know, have Japanese websites, but they usually don't even have proper customer support - it's either AI or Google Translator or something like that."
Paying Taxes While Rivals Look Away
Fintokei's compliance posture is where its claims get pointed. The firm says it is VAT-registered in Japan and has paid local taxes there since day one, something Varga suggests most, if not all, competing prop firms have skipped, whether out of ignorance or intent, and not only in Japan.
"We have deliberately invested significant effort and money in establishing a robust framework to ensure regulatory compliance, local awareness, and stability for our customers," Varga said. "Our objective is not short-term profit, but long-term sustainability for traders and the healthy development of the industry as a whole in Japan."
The firm has worked alongside Japanese legal and tax advisers throughout its presence there - a structural investment that most prop firms, operating globally with minimal local footprint, have little incentive to replicate.
A Payout Record That Is Hard to Argue With
The 120-payout trader is an outlier, but Fintokei's broader payout track record has become a core part of its market positioning. After launching instant withdrawals in mid-2025, the firm claims a 99.9% withdrawal success rate and says it has never rejected a legitimate payout request.
"Therefore, we don't reject payouts when the payout is actually due... as it's the cornerstone of the whole prop trading business," Varga said. Rather than disputing withdrawals, Fintokei says it manages risk upstream, flagging high-risk behavior during evaluation and capping leverage or daily profit limits before a funded account is ever at issue.
That discipline matters in a sector under increasing scrutiny. Prop Firm Match tracked roughly $325 million in total payouts across the industry in 2025, but acknowledged the data excluded major players including FTMO and The5ers. Meanwhile, the firm's own revenue rose 13-fold in 2024, with active traders surging 175%.
Industry That "Went a Little Too Wild"
Varga has been one of the more candid critics of the prop trading sector's growing pains. In earlier comments, he said the industry had "gone a little too wild in terms of competition, marketing, way of communication or even running the whole business operations, including some dirty practices happening."
He has long argued that broker-backed prop firms offer a more sustainable model, one where the firm's incentives are better aligned with the trader's long-term success.
"We foresee a more serious and professionalized approach is the future for prop trading, with an emphasis on transparency and stability," he said. "Whether it will be enforced by regulation, or evolve naturally."
Fintokei began expanding beyond Japan and Central Europe in 2024, targeting Australia, broader Europe, and Southeast Asia. But Japan, still early in its adoption curve, still producing traders with more patience and discipline than almost anywhere else, remains both its biggest market and, by its own account, its most important one.
