Kalshi partners with Alpaca to push event contracts through global brokerage pipes
Kalshi has partnered with Alpaca, a brokerage and financial infrastructure startup, to integrate its event contracts into Alpaca's global brokerage platform. The deal gives more than 300 financial institutions and 14 million account holders access to Kalshi's CFTC-regulated prediction markets through Alpaca's API. Alpaca will handle custody, money movement, statements, and account management, while Kalshi provides the regulated marketplace, event contracts, and clearing services. The partnership is aimed at expanding Kalshi internationally beyond the US market once local regulatory approvals are secured.
This partnership turns Alpaca's 14-million-account brokerage rail into a global distribution channel for prediction markets without Kalshi building retail onboarding from scratch. Banks, fintechs, and wealth platforms can now offer event-contract trading to their end users through a single API integration. The move mirrors Gemini's recent Apex venue deal for crypto event contracts, confirming that brokerage infrastructure has become the decisive battleground for prediction-market expansion.
For competitors like Polymarket, which lacks comparable broker-dealer partnerships, the risk is clear: institutional and retail flow will concentrate in venues that eliminate onboarding friction. Kalshi's challenge is proving that brokers actually market the product to their end users, not merely list it. The first volume figures from Alpaca-sourced trades will show whether this infrastructure play converts into active traders or remains a passive integration.
Kalshi becomes the second prediction-market platform to plug into a major brokerage infrastructure network after Gemini's recent Apex deal, as event-contract venues race to secure global distribution pipes rather than building retail onboarding from scratch.