The Two-Entity Pattern, Explained

The company you contract with when you buy an evaluation and the company that holds the licence shown on the website are usually two different members of the same group, and the licence does not extend to your contract. The firms say so themselves: ThinkCapital’s terms state that no other ThinkMarkets-group entity is a party to, or guarantor of, that contract.

This is a normal and lawful way to organise a group of companies. Separating activities into separate legal entities — one licensed for a regulated activity, one for an unregulated one, sometimes a third for payments — is ordinary corporate practice across financial services and well outside it. Nothing about the pattern is concealed: the clearest descriptions of it are published by the firms themselves, in the documents you agree to.

It still decides who owes you the payout, whose law governs an argument about it, and which regulator can reach the company on the other side. Those consequences are written down in the same documents. The wider industry movement this sits inside is mapped in prop firms and brokers are converging.

---

Where is the separation actually written down?

The clearest published statement of it in the industry is in ThinkCapital’s terms of service, in the December 2025 revision. One paragraph closes three questions at once — whether permissions carry across, whether client-money and compensation protections carry across, and who is liable on the contract:

“The Provider is not authorised or regulated as a financial services firm or investment firm in any jurisdiction. Any commercial, contractual or branding affiliation between the Provider and any entity within the ThinkMarkets group does not extend ThinkMarkets’ regulatory permissions, authorisations, client-money protections, investor compensation arrangements, or any other regulatory benefit to the Customer. The Customer acknowledges that the Customer’s contract for the Services is solely with TFG (Payments) Limited and that no other ThinkMarkets-group entity is a party to, or guarantor of, that contract.”

Source: thinkcapital.com/terms-of-services.

The counterparty named there — TFG (Payments) Limited — is a UK company, number 10537331. The licences that appear around the ThinkMarkets brand belong to other companies in the same group: TF Global Markets (UK) Ltd holds FCA FRN 629628, TF Global Markets (Aust) Pty Ltd holds ASIC AFSL 424700, and there is an FSCA authorisation in South Africa under FSP 49835. ThinkCapital’s own about page states that it “only provides services of simulated trading and educational tools”, “does not act as a broker and does not accept any deposits”, and “offers only demo accounts”. Its separate demo agreement adds, at §3.1.1, that the company “does not receive or execute… any trading instructions, does not trade on its own account… does not receive any assets from, or manage any assets for, the Customer”.

The second exhibit: a group-level disclaimer

Purple Group publishes its version at group level rather than product level.

“Purple Group is not a legal entity. It is a brand representing a group of independent companies… Each service referred to on this website is provided by a specific company within the group, on its own account and under its own authorisations where required. Where this website refers to a service as ‘regulated’ or ‘EU regulated’, this relates only to the relevant authorised company and to the specific service for which that authorisation has been granted; no other service or company within the group should be assumed to be regulated.”

Source: purple.group.

Behind that statement the group’s functions sit in separate companies: Purple Technology s.r.o. in Brno for technology and operations; L.F. Investment Limited (Cyprus 329493), a CIF under CySEC licence 271/15, which is the Purple Trading brand in the EU; LFA International Ltd (Cyprus HE422638) for card processing; AXSE Brokerage Ltd (Seychelles 8424258), Seychelles FSA licence SD041, also trading as Purple Trading; and Fintokei a.s. (Brno, IČO 19325281) for the prop product. Fintokei integrates with the Seychelles entity rather than the Cypriot CIF, and states on its own site that it “is a trading education and evaluation company that does not in any way collect customer deposits or offer any financial services” and “is not a broker and does not accept any customer’s deposits”.

Both of those passages sit in a legal notice or in the terms you accept. Neither of them is on a product page.

---

Who is on the other side of each contract?

Figures verified 31 July 2026. The IC Funded contracting entity is confirmed by the firm’s general manager to be a separate company, but it is not named in any source we located. Moneta’s licence set comes from the launch announcement rather than from a register entry we checked.

---

What the pattern does to a contract, mechanically

Which entity owes the payout. The obligation sits with the company named as the counterparty in the evaluation or funding agreement, and only that company. ThinkCapital’s terms say this in as many words: the contract is “solely with TFG (Payments) Limited” and “no other ThinkMarkets-group entity is a party to, or guarantor of, that contract”. Blueberry’s terms open with “these Terms and Conditions are agreed between you and Blueberry Markets (SVG) LLC trading as BlueberryFunded (the Company)”. At FTMO the obligation moves between two companies as you progress: the challenge is sold by FTMO Evaluation Global s.r.o., and the funded stage is a separate FTMO Account Agreement with FTMO Trading s.r.o. Payment can involve a third company again — Blueberry’s payouts run through BBF Treasury Pty Ltd.

Whose terms govern, and where a dispute goes. This follows the contracting entity, not the brand. The5ers’ terms are governed by Israeli law with exclusive jurisdiction in the Israeli courts, because the contracting company is Five Percent Online Ltd, registered in both England and Wales and Israel. A firm whose evaluation entity is registered in St Vincent and the Grenadines or St Lucia will normally point the same way.

Which regulator’s rules reach which relationship. A regulator supervises the entity it authorised, in respect of the activity it authorised. The licensed brokerage entity’s conduct rules, client-money rules and compensation scheme attach to that entity’s own clients. They do not attach to a contract with a different company in the group, which is precisely what the ThinkCapital paragraph is written to make explicit. A worked illustration exists: on 23 June 2025 CySEC announced a €150,000 settlement with L.F. Investment Ltd — the licensed Cypriot broker in the Purple group — covering the period July 2021 to 1 October 2023, across five areas including conflicts of interest and restrictions on marketing CFDs to retail clients. It was paid without any admission of liability, and nothing here should be read as a finding against any party. The mechanical point is simply which company the supervisory action reached.

For what any of this means for compensation schemes, ombudsmen and appeal rights, see are prop firms regulated; for what a licence from a small offshore registry does and does not represent, see offshore licences, what they actually are.

Several firms exclude their own home jurisdiction from the prop product. Blueberry restricts Australia, where its ASIC licence sits; The5ers restricts Israel; Funding Pips restricts the UAE.

---

How to identify the counterparty in three steps

1. Open the terms and find the naming sentence. Every set of evaluation terms we reviewed names its parties in the first clause or in a definitions block: “agreed between you and X”, or “the Provider means X”. Write down the company name, the company number and the jurisdiction. That is your counterparty.
2. Check whether the funded stage is a different agreement. Several firms split the relationship in two, with a separate agreement and sometimes a separate company for the funded account, and a third for payment. If a second document exists, the obligation you care about — the payout — is usually in that one.
3. Take the licence number from the website and look up who holds it. Regulator registers are public: FCA FRN, ASIC AFSL, CySEC licence number, FSC Mauritius number. Compare the name on the register with the name from step one. If they differ, the licence covers the entity on the register, in respect of that entity’s own authorised business.

Terms used here that carry a firm-specific definition — provider, funded account, payout — are set out in the glossary.

A licence badge on a website is a fact about another company. It says something true about that company’s authorised business, and nothing about the contract you signed. Whether the account behind that contract is real is a different question, and it is taken up in is a funded account a real trading account.

---

Written by the upme.com research desk. Every entity name, company number and licence number above comes from the firm’s own published terms or from a regulator’s register, and each is dated to 31 July 2026. Where a source does not name an entity, we say that rather than guessing. Corrections to the address on our sourcing page. Nothing here is legal or investment advice.

Sources

Every factual claim above is drawn from one of the documents below. Where a document has been superseded since the date given, tell us and the piece is corrected with a dated line.

• Source
• Source
• Source
• Source
• Source
• Source
• Source
• Source
• Source
• Source
• Source
• Source