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LiquidityMatch LLC, the parent company of FXSpotStream, has launched RateStream LLC, a dedicated streaming solution for the Fixed Income markets that applies the commercial model that transformed FX trading over the past decade to one of the largest and most actively traded markets in the world.
RateStream launches with six tier-one Liquidity Providers: BNP Paribas, Citi, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. The service initially focuses on US Treasuries, with European Government Bonds and additional liquidity providers to follow later in 2026. Its defining feature is a no-cost-to-taker structure in which clients pay no commissions, data fees, access charges or hosting costs, with liquidity providers bearing a flat fee to participate. Clients connect via a single API at a New York co-location site (NY4), enabling bilateral, click-to-trade streaming of both on-the-run and off-the-run US Treasuries across all participating banks.
"The addition of US Treasuries to our offering broadens the liquidity options available through our Service. In addition, as leading participants in global Fixed Income markets, the initial banks' participation affirms our commitment to enhancing market liquidity and providing our clients with greater depth and choice. 2026 has so far been a record year for our FX service, and we now look forward to complementing this with a best-in-class Fixed Income product."
Jeff Ward
CEO, FXSpotStream
A Market at an Inflection Point
RateStream enters a US Treasury market experiencing both record growth and acute commercial pressure on its participants. According to research published by Crisil Coalition Greenwich in February 2026, average daily notional volume in the US Treasury market rose 16% year-on-year in 2025, exceeding one trillion dollars per day for the first time in the market's history. April 2025 was the single busiest Treasury trading month on record, averaging USD 1.3 trillion per day. Tradeweb alone reported record US government bond average daily volume of USD 237.2 billion in 2025, up 11.6% year-on-year, with institutional investors accessing liquidity from 38 providers.
That volume growth, however, has not translated into lower costs for the banks making markets across it. Analysis published by The DESK in October 2024 estimated total transaction costs paid by liquidity providers to the six major platforms - CME, ICE, LSEG, Tradeweb, MarketAxess and Bloomberg - at approximately USD 12.8 billion in 2023, up from USD 7.95 billion in 2019. Dealer surveys suggested an average 10% year-on-year fee increase across trading platforms over the preceding five years, with some firms reporting cost growth of as much as 500% over that period.
This fee burden is what RateStream is designed to address.
The Incumbent Landscape
Fixed income electronic trading has long been dominated by a small group of established venues, each operating fundamentally transaction-based commercial models.
Tradeweb, the largest and most diversified fixed income venue, generates the majority of its revenue from transaction fees and commissions, which accounted for 83% of total revenue in 2024. It supports a broad suite of protocols including RFQ, executable streaming, list trading and algorithmic execution, with its wholesale Dealerweb arm providing inter-dealer streaming and anonymous order book access in parallel.
BrokerTec, owned by CME Group, is the leading central limit order book for inter-dealer US Treasury trading and provides the primary price-discovery benchmark for the market. Its BrokerTec Stream service offers relationship-based streaming to buy-side clients alongside the core CLOB, operating on a transaction-fee and market-data-fee model.
Bloomberg has historically bundled fixed income execution within its terminal subscription, effectively offering electronic Treasury trading at no incremental per-trade charge to existing terminal users. That model is now changing: Bloomberg has recently notified dealers of plans to introduce transactional charges for FX trading, currently free, signalling a broader shift toward layered fee structures across its trading services. Its Fixed Income Trading (FIT) platform has also been significantly upgraded in recent years, adding FitStreams for bilateral US Treasury streaming and, in February 2025, dealer algo execution.
MarketAxess is the dominant electronic venue for investment grade and high yield corporate bonds, with its Liquidity Edge platform extending reach into rates. It charges per-million transaction commissions with varying fee schedules by product type and client tier, supplemented by information services and post-trade analytics.
MTS, the European government bond specialist owned by Euronext, operates order-book and RFQ-based trading across European sovereign debt and has recently expanded into European corporate bonds via its BondVision platform, competing explicitly on fee transparency and cost.
The common thread across all incumbents: liquidity providers pay significant per-trade or per-volume fees to make markets on these platforms, costs that have risen materially as electronic volumes have grown and best execution obligations have pushed more flow through lit venues.
A Unique Commercial Position
Research across the institutional fixed income landscape identifies no multibank streaming platform that currently offers a no-cost-to-taker model equivalent to what RateStream is launching with. In FX, FXSpotStream describes its commercial model as unique -- the only venue on the market that eliminates execution costs for price takers entirely, with banks paying a flat fee to provide pricing. That claim now extends to Rates.
The only circumstances under which a fixed income price taker currently pays nothing are when connecting directly to a bank's own single-dealer platform (SDP). That is a bilateral arrangement, not a multibank utility, and the pricing competitive tension that comes from multiple streaming banks is absent. RateStream combines the zero-cost-to-taker feature of an SDP connection with the multi-LP pool of a conventional venue.
One platform worth noting in this context is Ediphy, a London-based fixed income execution and automation service that positions itself as a lower-cost alternative to the incumbent venues. Ediphy's core execution service carries no onboarding fee, no installation cost and no recurring subscription charge. However, a trading fee is incorporated into final settlement prices on each transaction. Ediphy operates as an agency execution service, routing orders across multiple venues and liquidity endpoints on behalf of clients and charging a transparent embedded fee for doing so. It is a cost-reduction and best-execution proposition but it does not eliminate execution costs for the taker entirely.
"We have long supported the direct API model offered through FXSpotStream, and are now happy to use RateStream to access streaming protocols at a number of our key Liquidity Providers in a fast, cost-effective manner."
Clifford Cook
Head of FI Trading, ExodusPoint Capital Management
Comments from RateStream's Liquidity Providers
"The U.S. Treasury market continues to evolve, with clients increasingly looking for relationship-based, multi-level streaming liquidity. RateStream is a welcome addition to the market structure, and we look forward to working with them as the service develops."
Jamie Mortimore
Global Head Rates E-Trading, Citi
"J.P. Morgan and our partner banks have long shared a vision of delivering competitive, cross-bank liquidity that improves execution efficiency for clients. Building on FXSpotStream's foundations, we're pleased to support the launch of RateStream, extending these network benefits into Fixed Income. We look forward to expanding access to more clients and vendors as the products and protocols evolve."
Matthew Franklin-Lyons
Global Head of Rates Trading, J.P. Morgan
"As the fixed income market evolves along the electrification frontier, additional ways of trading will be needed. RateStream has developed a cost-effective, low latency streaming protocol that enables relationship-based trading. Morgan Stanley is pleased to be an early adopter of the protocol."
Michael Harris
Head of eRates and Algo Client Coverage, Morgan Stanley
What Comes Next
RateStream has signalled plans to integrate European Government Bonds and add further liquidity providers before the end of 2026. Given FXSpotStream's history of gradual LP network expansion -- it now connects 18 liquidity providers across FX and Precious Metals since launching in 2011 -- the Rates iteration is likely to follow a similar trajectory, growing both the instrument scope and the bank panel as connectivity is established.
For the broader fixed income market, the launch raises a structural question: if a zero-cost-to-taker multibank streaming model can establish critical mass in the world's most liquid government bond market, does it create a precedent for European Government Bonds, interest rate swaps and eventually credit? FXSpotStream's FX playbook suggests the answer could be yes -- but it took years to build the network depth that made that service genuinely competitive. RateStream is starting at a higher base, with six global banks from day one, in a market where the fee pressure argument has never been more acute.
LiquidityFinder's View
The launch of RateStream is one of the more consequential market structure moments in fixed income in several years, due to its disruptive commercial model.
What has not existed until now is a venue that eliminates the cost of execution for Fixed Income price takers entirely. In a market where liquidity provider costs across the six major platforms ran to an estimated USD 12.8 billion in 2023 alone, this could be disruptive.
The opportunity is substantial. US Treasury average daily volume exceeded one trillion dollars for the first time in 2025, growing 16% year-on-year, and the fee pressure on banks providing that liquidity is well-documented and accelerating. FXSpotStream's flat-fee-to-maker model - proven over fourteen years in FX - gives the buy side a genuinely cost-free access point to multi-LP streaming in a market where every other institutional multibank option carries some form of price taker charge.
RateStream needs to build the network effect with a large enough LP panel streaming tight, competitive prices to give buy-side clients a reason to add another connectivity point to their already complex workflows. Six tier-one banks is a strong starting position. The incumbents - Tradeweb, BrokerTec and Bloomberg - have years of embedded client relationships, deep data and analytics integrations, and multi-protocol infrastructure that creates switching friction, but will be worth considering if fees are removed.
Fixed income also differs structurally from FX in ways that could complicate the playbook. Clearing requirements, the sheer number of instruments across the curve, repo market dynamics, and the eventual need to support European Government Bonds at scale all add operational complexity that FX does not carry to the same degree. The announced EGB expansion before end-2026 will be a significant test of whether the model can extend beyond the most liquid, most standardised segment of the rates universe.
That said, the timing is as good as it has ever been. The convergence of record Treasury volumes, rising LP costs, regulatory pressure on best execution, and growing buy-side focus on explicit transaction costs creates the conditions in which a credible lower-cost alternative can gain traction.
FXSpotStream is not building from scratch - it has a proven model, an established LP network, and a brand that is well-regarded on both sides of the market. If RateStream can execute on its expansion roadmap and sustain bank commitment to the flat-fee structure, it has a strong start to becoming a meaningful part of US Treasury market infrastructure.
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