Banking institutions do the majority of business transactions on a daily basis and a large amount of speculation. The set of Forex products offered by different banking institutions varies depending on their size. Some banks only offer spot exchanges and currency forwards while large institutions offer currency options, currency swaps, currency futures and option dated currency forwards.

A large bank can trade billions of dollars a day, most of which are done by customers, but some are done through proprietary tables, in other words: trading for the bank's own account.

A study by Greenwich Associates found that foreign exchange dealers dominate banking institutions such as Deutsche Bank, UBS, Citigroup, Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Banking institutions do not know the exact percentage of accountable daily foreign exchange business, but Deutsche Bank and UBS account for more than 10% of the market share.