Payment for Order Flow

Abstract

Abstract Payment for Order Flow (PFOF) is the practice of execution venues to make payments to a brokerage firm if the brokerage firm routes client orders to these execution venues. Following the “Gamestop” incident, PFOF has become the subject of increased scrutiny in the US and the EU. The European Commission has recently proposed legislation to ban this practice altogether. This article assesses the admissibility of PFOF under MiFID II with a focus on the German implementation and provides an overview of the proposed PFOF ban against the broader MiFIR legislative package.