OANDA was founded on the belief that technology and the Internet would globalize the marketplace, creating an unprecedented need for currency-related products and services. Today, the global forex market trades over $3 trillion/day (30 times larger than NASDAQ and NYSE combined), with online retail trading a rapidly growing part of that market. We estimate that over 20% of the world's online spot forex transactions take place on OANDA's servers.
Possessing one of the world's largest and most accurate databases of currency rates, OANDA was the first in 1995 to offer a broad range of currency exchange-rate information free of charge over the Web. Today, it handles more than a million queries a day. In 1997 OANDA became an Internet-based business-to-business application service provider (ASP) and currently services over 75,000 ASP clients around the world.

With its launch of fxTrade in 2001, OANDA was one of the first companies to offer fully automated online currency trading. The OANDA fxTrade system provides retail and institutional clients a state-of-the-art platform that enables competitive, real-time access to the foreign exchange market.

In 2008 OANDA used the same rationale to launch a fully automated, online funds transfer service, fxGlobalTransfer. With its 24/7 availability, low, variable spreads, price transparency, and security, this OANDA innovation was designed to offer clients a low-cost, convenient, and secure method of sending funds globally at any time from any computer connected to the Internet.

OANDA was co-founded by Dr. Michael Stumm, a professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, and Dr. Richard Olsen of The Olsen Ltd., a leading econometric research and development firm. The company was incorporated in the state of Delaware in 1996.