I would like to welcome you cordially to the XTB conference on the preliminary results for H1 2025. Our meeting will last roughly one hour. We'll begin with a presentation to be run by the management team, namely Omar Arnaout, the CEO, Paweł Szejko, the CFO, and member of the management board, Filip Kaczmarzyk, who is responsible for trading. Following the presentation, we'll move on to a Q&A session. You can pose your questions utilizing the chat function. The window should be visible in the right bottom of your screen. You can send your questions through that function. Without protracting any longer, I'll give the floor to the management team, and I'll invite you to take a listen to the presentation.
Moving on to the financial portion.
During the first half of 2025, XTB generated PLN 410 million consolidated net profit, of which PLN 216 million was in Q2, PLN 194 was in Q1. If we look at the mix of this result, we can say that we have a record-breaking value of revenue in H1. This is a result of the strategy we embraced as a priority for this year to build our customer base. This is something we can see based on the operational data, the number of active customers, the number of new customers. These are record-breaking figures, and of course, the CEO will speak to this at greater length later in the presentation. The next important element driving the net result is the higher cost.
Well, we had advised you about the higher cost at the beginning of the year when we presented our expectations in this area, the third major driver of great significance with respect to the net result is the FX loss in H1 of this year. It was PLN 85 million. For the sake of comparison, in H1 2024, we had FX gains of six million PLN. Here we see had we not had the FX loss, the net profit in H1 of this year would have been considerably higher than it is year-on-year. This is a result of the significant appreciation of the złoty, primarily against the US dollar. Moving on to a more detailed discussion of revenue. In H1, we had PLN 1,116 million in revenue. That is PLN 580 million in both of these two quarters. These are record-breaking figures at XTB.
In Q2, we saw a substantial increase in trading volume amongst our customers. We can see that on a nominal basis, as well as in terms of loss, as the volumes grew, the profitability of this trading volume was lower in Q2. This is a result of the characterization of the market. XTB, generally speaking, is earning the most in situations in which there's long, clear trends. Our customers then have a proclivity to trade against the trend. In turn, when there's a horizontal or sideways trend, then we have range trading. Customers are trading actively. You can see that in terms of the volumes, but the profitability of such transactions is lower. This is something that took place in Q2 of this year, where in April we had a very good week, a Trump week, when there was a clear trend, but it was not a lengthy period.
That contributed in turn to very high revenues. In the later portion of the period, we saw a sideways trend, this is something that formed the revenue in the second quarter of the year. As we look at the revenue mix by the instrument class responsible for generating that revenue, we can say that in the first half of the year, we earned the most on CFD instruments based on indices. This was some 46%. The second place was held by CFD instruments for commodities with a 33% share, the third place was held by FX CFDs with a 16% share. I can tell you as a matter of tradition that this mix changes from period to period. This is something we consider to be natural in our business model.
Quite simply put, our customers, depending on what's happening on the market in a given point of time, are tracking the volatility, looking for investment opportunities. As I move on to the cost side of things, according to what we said at the beginning of the year, our OPEX would grow substantially in the first half of the year by PLN 190 million. Marketing had the biggest increase at PLN 108 million. The next largest is payroll expenses at PLN 44 million. We've also optimized some of the costs when it comes to the incoming payments and the outgoing payments for customers. Here, we've been able to save PLN 10 million in the quarter. The marketing cost increased stemmed from the priorities that we had for this year, so building our customer base. Payroll expenses grew as a result of higher headcount.
Here we would confirm what we shared with you at the beginning of the year. We anticipate that in the full 2025, our OPEX can be higher by some 40%, marketing expenses may be higher by 80% year-on-year. XTB is a company with a very good financial position. At the end of June, we had PLN 1,170,000,000 in own funds and cash equivalents. The decline versus the end of the year is a result of the dividend payout at the end of June to shareholders. Having in mind the very robust financial condition, we're a dividend company. We share dividends with our investors regularly. We want to distribute 50%-100% of our standalone net profit. We've been distributing roughly 80% on average to our shareholders.
Thank you very much, Paweł. If we could now move this slide forward. Good day, ladies and gentlemen.
The first half of this year, from an operational point of view, was a wonderful period. If we look at new customers that joined XTB compared to the previous year, the increase is above 55%. If we're talking about active customers, this increase is nearly 70%. Before I move on, one other thing that's worth mentioning, I know this has already been reported. Even if we think about the number of new customers in July, is more than 60,000 new customers, which is roughly an 80% increase over the previous year. This is an enormous increase in terms of the number of new customers. This is something that Paweł mentioned previously. This is linked to higher marketing expenses by some 60-odd%. It's roughly 69% increase in marketing expenses. This has contributed to an increase in the number of active customers by 70%.
The marketing budgets, especially the very big marketing spend, it's easy to spend that money, but to do that efficiently, that's not something that's easy. This is something I'd like to thank the marketing team very strongly for, because we've done very well here in the first half of the year. As you can see in the presentation, the cost of acquiring a customer, despite the high increase in costs, is roughly PLN 700. It's stayed at roughly the same level. This is something that pleases us greatly. Another thing, we're a multi-asset broker, and this has also contributed to the net deposits, and they've increased by some 90% over the previous year, and they're nearly PLN 8 billion. What's very important here, something that should be emphasized, the trading volume in lots, but also in terms of the spread generated, grew by some 40%.4
One, of course, can think about why this did not affect profitability to the same extent. Of course, from the point of view of revenue, it's up by 20%, but trading volume in terms of spread and lots by more than 40%. Of course, we're aware of the fact that Filip will say much more about this subject. What we should emphasize here, however, is that this is largely dependent on the situation on a given market. Just as Paweł said, April was wonderful. If we have in mind or compare the situation in markets that were the most important for like DAX, the U.S. market or gold, with the exception of exceptional periods in May and June, the market was generally exhibiting a sideways trend. What's important here is we're sticking to our strategy.
We're trying to build the largest possible base of customers to generate better and better results in the future. I'm convinced that the current base of customers, and we'll be able to exceed the watermark of 2 million customers, and we'll be able to generate better and better results if the market situations will be favorable. Let's move on. As I mentioned, our strategy has not changed. We've already talked about marketing. On top of marketing, one aspect that's very important to us is the development of technology and the development of products. If we look at product development, the two most important products which were released in the first half of the year, these were PEA accounts for customers in France. We started several weeks ago with a large-scale marketing campaign, above all, to advertise the PEA accounts.
This product will be developed further to make sure that it's the best product in the French market. I'm convinced this is something that will happen this year. The other product that you're perfectly well aware of is the xStation product. We released that a few weeks ago. In terms of the most important products that we'd like to roll out this year, of course, this is invariably options as well as cryptocurrencies. On top of the products, which I've already mentioned, I've talked about the most important product changes. These are not the only changes that are taking place to products this year. On top of the products I mentioned, we have the eWallet for most of the European markets where we're present. We have also introduced the pending orders feature under the Individual Retirement Account in Poland.
What's also important for our U.K. customers, we have the ability to transfer ISA accounts, which will strengthen our competitive position on the British market. We've also made a host of changes on our platform, on our mobile app, and we also have the beginnings and tests in terms of our artificial intelligence approach. We have also introduced the TOTP options, which is linked to the 2FA, and this is linked to safety. During today's presentation, Filip will say even more about that subject. If we think about international expansion, what's key? In the United Arab Emirates, we have a second office. This is a market that continues to grow robustly. We're not thinking about strengthening the brand, but the offer itself, because in that market, we're not seen as a multi-asset broker.
This is work that we have to do on top of the United Arab Emirates. In Chile, we have several months ago, secured an additional license enabling us to offer ETFs, and this is a totally new opening. In Chile, we were only seen as a CFD broker. Now our branch in Chile is transforming into a typical European multi-asset market. We've launched two weeks ago, the largest campaign in history, and we can see that the results are visible almost from the get-go. This is a bit of a surprise to us because these type of changes usually don't happen too quickly. Something that you don't see in the presentation, but has in fact transpired, maybe not linked so much to international expansion.
For many years, we have been doing a small business in the Hungarian market, now we've strengthened substantially our marketing spend, and we want this market to be one of the more important markets in Europe. The campaign was launched some three weeks ago, we're quite positively surprised by the interest in offering on the Hungarian market. Historically, we have only offered CFD instruments. We now are a multi-asset broker there. Most lastly, in the Indonesian market, several weeks ago, we kicked off our operations. The marketing activities will begin next week, and this is a market where there's no brand awareness or awareness of our offerings, so it'll take us some time to build our position there. This is a license only to offer equities and ETFs.
In the near future, we'll apply for new licenses, we hope by the end of this year or the beginning of next year, they will be granted. If we look at the Brazilian market, nothing has changed here. We continue to wait to receive our license. On top of that, we've already said quite a bit about marketing, in contrast to previous years, the vacation period is very intense, not only from the point of view that we're preparing ourselves to the largest campaign in the history of the company, which will probably be kicked off in September. As I mentioned, during the vacation period, we have intensive campaigns in the French market linked to the PEA product, also in Chile as well as in Hungary.
Now, I can say a few words about the market environment in Q2.
On this slide, you can see the increase in our assets. We can see that our cash instruments are growing the most quickly. This is a result of the onboarding of customers, so we have cash-based instruments for the most part there. On this slide, you can see a traditional graph where you can see the most popular instruments. We can focus on this for a moment. It's a group of the same instruments we've been observing in previous quarters. We can say that this quarter was distinctly different in terms of volatility. It began at the end of March when Trump kicked off his trade wars. The zenith was in the first seven, 10 days of April when equity markets fell by some 15%-20%.
This was a period in which the company generated a large portion of its revenue on account of this volatility, above all. Later, during the rest of the quarter, we can say that the markets calmed down. If we think about the equity markets, they started gradually to revisit the levels that they had seen prior to the beginning of Q2. The markets generated new records. We can say that S&P on the DAX market, we had a similar situation. Also in gold achieved record-breaking levels. Well, actually, the record-breaking levels were achieved when the equity markets were falling. We can say that gold lapsed into a sideways trend. In Q2, we can say that we are largely focused on the indices as well as gold.
If we think about cryptocurrencies in terms of volatility, it was a calmer quarter in terms of the volume of trading, but things are happening. Volatility started to show up in the most recent period at record-breaking levels, but Q2 was rather a calm quarter. The company, nevertheless, generated some $50 million-$80 million in this portion of its business. On the next slide, we can see a growing share of xStation in terms of trading activity of customers. MT4 is falling. We can say that this will continue to shrink, where the xStation Mobile will grow primarily. This is actually the strategy that the company is pursuing. As Omar said, I wanted to say a couple of words about the various types of solutions that we have put in place for security at XTB, as well as some of the ones that we're working on.
We've said quite a bit, or in the media you can read quite a bit about this subject. XTB attaches great importance to security. In August of last year, we launched a solution called 2FA for customers utilizing an SMS. As the CEO mentioned recently, we opened up the opportunity to utilize Google Authenticator and Microsoft Authenticator. These are options that we continue to develop. What I would like to emphasize now is the fact that XTB, from a very long period of time, the most important activities linked to changing bank accounts or passwords or paying out money, they always have had this SMS password protection. Even with 2FA, there was no opportunity for an authorized payment from an account to be possible without an additional verification.
What we will do in the upcoming weeks, in most cases, this is something that will be done very quickly. We will set up 2FA for all of the customers in Poland. We want to complete this process in August. Then we'll roll it out across the following branches. The next step would be for us to add the mandatory 2FA when setting up the account, so when customers set up their accounts. Then in subsequent steps, this is something that will be done to add additional security when funds are being disbursed through the eWallet. This will also include monitoring of logins of customers from new locations or from locations they haven't used to log in in the past.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to thank the gentleman for the presentation.
It seems to me that many questions that you will pose or have posed have been addressed. We'll move on now to the Q&A session at this time. To avoid recurring questions, we're going to try to group your questions. We'll take one or two representative questions which address a given issue. Then we will go ahead and select those questions now to respond to your questions. Let's begin. As a result of the delay in introducing the MiCA directive in Poland, do you have an alternative scenario for introducing cryptocurrencies? If so, when could that happen? There was also a question about the stage of work with the Polish FSA and also about customers from the competition. Perhaps I'll go ahead and try to respond to this question.
In terms of the MiCA directive, yes, I can confirm this is something in Poland that continues to be pushed back. We've applied for a MiCA license in Cyprus. We're talking with the regulator. What we're counting on is that within the next few months, we'll be able to secure that license in Cyprus. We're also checking solutions to offer cryptocurrencies in other of our subsidiaries. If we're thinking about Poland, the main portion of the business, unfortunately, we have to wait for the implementation of the MiCA directive locally. In terms of our cooperation with the Polish FSA, this is not the point in time for cooperation. This is something that's being done at the Ministry of Finance. There are consultations underway with the market. Everything indicates, however, that this is not something that will appear prior to December.
In terms of taking on customers, we believe that we're going to be able to give the best possible service to our customers, a credible and safe service. We have a strong base of existing customers. It seems to us that we're capable of offering very attractive and competitive products to customers. Thank you very much. We can go on to the next question. Do you have any plans for more banking services, for example, through Revolut? When could this theoretically take place? I don't know. Filip, you want to respond to this question? We share our product plans with you as our customers. This is usually done at the beginning of the year when we announce what our product plans are, so you know our plans for this year.
At the beginning of next year, we will go ahead and share some or divulge some secrets in terms of what else we plan for products. Let's go on maybe to this question. What's happening with the idea of adding corporate bonds to the offering? When, if at all, can we expect this to take place? As we've mentioned last year, this is a product that's somehow on the shelf or it's in a drawer. We're focusing this year on the bigger products, so cryptocurrencies, we're focusing on options. We're also focusing on perfecting our offering for each one of the markets where we have a foothold to make sure that regardless of the branch where we're present, we're going to be able to compete with the best market offering.
Realistically, we're focusing on optimizing our current offering, adapting it to the local requirements, but we're focusing on those two products that I've mentioned. Okay. We have some questions about the eWallet. What was the reason for introducing fees for eWallet? There were some other questions that we'd received previously about that same subject. In terms of eWallet, we gave our customers time to utilize and test this product free of charge. We have some fees that were introduced according to the price list that we have proposed for eWallet is very attractive compared to our competition. Even though we have fees introduced as of September, the prices will continue to be very attractive, in terms of what the competition in the market offers, generally speaking. We believe that this product will continue to enjoy a large amount of interest amongst our customers.
We don't have any plans to adjust the price list for the eWallet service in any other subject area. Are you happy with the development of your position in international markets in Germany, France, and the U.K.? Can you share some KPIs? Well, the KPIs that are the most important for us on these markets, it's clear that the number of new customers is highly satisfactory to us. Is it sufficient to achieve that growth? Well, no, clearly not. In terms of the path that we want to pursue, we've probably completed 20% of the path that we want to follow. Let me give some general information about all of these markets. Well, there are two goals that are quite important.
The first thing is that we want to build not only the awareness of the company itself, of who XTB is, but that XTB should be the company of first choice if we want to manage our assets actively and passively. We also have to build an awareness of our offering. I think Poland is a very good example. When we started offering equities and ETFs in Poland, it took us a bit of time, I think more than one and a half years, before we were able to generate that awareness amongst investors. Well, that these are genuine, bonafide equities and ETFs and not something that's just based on CFDs. Since it took us roughly, let's say, 15 months to build that awareness, here on these other markets, we have to build not only the awareness of the offer but also of the brand.
This is not a short-term process. This applies to all of these markets. The next thing is linked to the adaptation of the offering to the local needs. In Germany, I'm fully convinced that the offering we have today for the German market is capable of competing with the largest players on the German markets. It's only a matter of time and our marketing budgets. We have to continue doing what we're doing. We can't decide to begin increasing the budgets and then taper that off because we believe that we've spent too much. If you want to build the awareness, this is a process that takes time. This is a transitional year for all of these markets.
We're trying to emphasize that these products are tailor-made to these markets. I think Germany is a great example of where we are able to compete with everybody. In France, we've released a new product, the PE product, but it's still not a perfect product. We don't have the opportunity for transfers of PE accounts. We don't have enough products. ETFs are the most important thing that's missing. We're in the process of modifying that product to meet the local needs. PE is not the only element. There are a number of elements that need to be adapted. By the end of the year, our offering in the French market will be tailor-made to the needs of the market, just like it is in Germany. Next year we'll be able to look at the fruit of our labor.
In the U.K. market, we've just slightly increased our marketing budget. We want to see if any type of increase in the marketing budget will generate higher interest amongst customers. In each one of these markets, I can say that the effect is satisfactory. The greatest impact we can see on the German market for two reasons. The first reason, I've already mentioned that the offering is already tailor-made to meet the needs of the local market and the branding campaigns were started in Q4 of last year. The next market is the French market, where the increase is around 40% in terms of the numbers of customers that have been acquired, but we still have to do quite a bit of work to optimize our offering here. The smallest amount of growth has been seen in the U.K. market.
I haven't mentioned this previously, but the growth on the German market from the point of view of the number of customers acquired is more than 100%. These are major percentage increases, but having in mind the size of each one of these markets, we're far away from achieving our goal. Thank you very much. If we think about international markets, thanks to the license in Cyprus, where will you be able to offer cryptocurrencies? On which markets we'll be able to offer cryptocurrencies? The license from Cyprus does not give us a lot of opportunities. The idea is a little bit different. Cyprus, it seems to us, we can launch more quickly than Poland. What we'd like to do in Cyprus, we want to test the solution.
We want to create it in terms of the technical side of things, test it. Once we get the MiCA license in Poland, we'll be able to roll out that solution more quickly and more efficiently. It will be tested in terms of trading, but also with respect to the back office and the legal aspects. This is what we want to achieve through this test as opposed to offering cryptocurrencies through Cyprus to other markets. Let's come on to finance. In Q2 2025, to what extent did market making contribute positively to your results? We share information with you about the revenue mix with spreads, swaps, and market making on an annual basis. On a quarterly basis, we do not share that information.
If we look at the profitability per lot, you can track more or less how much market making is generating. You can look at the profitability per lot to understand whether or not market making has a positive contribution in a given period, or is it something that was negligible in a given period. Thank you very much for that response. We have a question about security. I wanted to ask about the physical U2F keys. Will it be possible to secure the account with them? We're only thinking about 2FA with SMSs and authenticators. We believe that this will be a complete and satisfactory solution. If we're talking about a trading account, in many cases, what's most important is the immediate access, and the security is equally important there.
In terms of what we want to offer, this is the best possible solution.
Let's come on to the customer base and acquiring customers. You've been able to generate customer growth as well as revenue growth, but the growth is not pro rata. What are the plans to monetize customers who are utilizing only equities and ETF trading without a commission? Maybe I can say something here. Filip can embellish that response. When we talk about our customer communication to generate interest amongst customers in other products, this is not something we've done. We want to create the best possible application to invest, regardless of whether or not a customer is active or passive. If a customer gets interested in some other opportunities in the future, that's fine, but we don't have any plans to persuade customers to do that. That's not our intention.
We want to have a single application for every possible investment activity. In terms of our internal activities, we're doing quite a bit to generate higher and higher revenue and profits in terms of products that are low-margin products. If, Filip, you can add something to that. What I can add to that is as follows. Our strategy is to offer in a single location, instruments of a highly different, varied risk profile. In some cases, we're the market maker. We offer equities free of charge, free of commissions. You also have trading of currencies. We're earning money on conversion of currencies. We do not persuade customers to invest in specific instruments.
We know that customers are looking for volatility, this is something that continues to be the case when a customer sets up an account with XTB, they can start with Polish equities, an account that's denominated in Polish złoty, if something's interesting happening on gold, they can start investing there. Basically, just as was said, we want to give our customers the ability to invest in different classes of instruments in a single site. Paweł mentioned this, and this is something that we said in the presentation previously. Revenue's up by 20%, but the spreads and lots are up by some 40%. This really depends on market circumstances. If market circumstances would have been much more favorable to us than what we had seen than in April, May, and June, then the disproportion between revenue and profitability would be much less.
Thank you very much. We have some questions that differ from what you've already responded to. I would encourage you to pose questions. I'm looking to see if something does in fact diverge from what you've already responded to. Here we have some questions about marketing spend. We'll put this up on the board. Per day. In a purely theoretical scenario in which you don't want to increase or augment the customer database, how much would you spend on marketing, having in mind the current level? If we think about the churn of clients, could you repeat the question? How much would your marketing spend be in a purely theoretical scenario if you did not want to augment the customer base, but you'd like to maintain it at its current size? This is a very difficult question.
I think if we were to spend less than we're spending right now, we could maintain the customer base at the same level where we are because we have a strong brand, and we have a good approach to generating long-term interest in our products. Only a portion of our marketing spend is linked to short-term equities. I think it could be substantially lower in order to retain the customer numbers. We're talking about a short-term effect. In theory, we could say for a year, we'd like to maintain customers, but if we were not to spend any money to strengthen the brand for a full year, and if we're not to do anything on branding, then the number of customers would dwindle.
The Nike company is a great example, where a few years ago, the CEO of Nike said that the branding expense should be stepped back. If we look at what's happening with Nike, this is not the best possible decision. Another thing that should also be mentioned, some companies in Europe have a very similar dream to the one that we have. If we were to stop spending money on marketing, then other companies could strengthen their position more quickly on the market. Then the number of customers could, in fact, fall quite quickly, and it would be very difficult to revisit the level that we currently have. I think we're participating in a race, and if we want to be the player of first choice in Europe, then we don't have any other choice.
We cannot basically abandon our role in this race, because if we do so, it'd just basically be too late. We have some questions about technology and about the future. Having in mind that cryptocurrencies are being adopted more broadly across the world, are you thinking about participating in the technological changes in the world of finance and how to capitalize on these changes? For example, the tokenization of assets, issuing, for example, stablecoins. Questions about plans for the future. I think it's premature to talk about any plans. We're waiting for the MiCA directive. The MiCA directive is quite important to us. In addition to offering trading, it would give us a host of other opportunities in terms of what we can do in terms of issues. Right now, we don't have talks about the subject.
Well, blockchain technology is not a topic per se, but the products linked to cryptocurrencies, this is something where we want to focus on offering trading opportunities to our customers. There are some other things that could appear, but everything depends on the offering for retail customers.
Thank you very much. We also have a question about options. When do you think that options could be rolled out?
In terms of options, we continue to do our work on the technical side of things, and it's probably the case that we should be ready in the early autumn with a solution. Please remember that we're in the licensing process, and it depends on us. It depends on the commission. Quite difficult to say when we'll be ready to offer that product. Our strategy here is similar to the one we're espousing with respect to cryptocurrencies.
There are some other subsidiaries that could be used to launch this. Technologically, we'll be prepared, but we're only going to be waiting for the license to be granted to a given subsidiary, and that would be how we would operationalize that plan. We have some nice questions about the latter half of the year. For any reasons, could we see higher customer acquisition in the second half of the year than we've seen in the first half of the year? This is a difficult question. Well, there are two elements here we should draw attention to. Well, there's greater interest in investments when much more is happening on the market, and that's something that's totally beyond us.
In terms of XTB, what's going to happen in the second half of the year, because we're talking about the fourth quarter and when we have the largest marketing campaign in the course of the year and when we're running the largest marketing campaign in the year, the interest in accounts is the highest. Here we should also mention this is a period when we're going to want to, of course, clearly tout the benefits of the IKE, the IKZE accounts, and others. July is a month that surprised us quite a bit because last year in July, we had roughly 36,000 new customers. At the time of publication, I remember it was more than 61,000 customers who've joined us at the moment of publication, that's an increase of some 80%.
If this trend is going to be continued despite the vacation period, we're going to have such an enormous amount of interest in accounts, then I don't see any obstacles whatsoever for the number of customers acquired in the latter second half of the year to be higher than what we've seen in the first half of the year. What's critical here, and this is something we're sharing with you, we're sharing our projections. We want to have at least 150,000 to 210,000 new accounts per quarter. Here, we don't see any threats to us being able to achieve that goal. We have several questions about the dividend. Is there a risk that the dividend next year will be smaller? At this point in time, it would be a little premature to talk about a dividend. Our dividend policy has not changed since 2016.
As a management team, we're focusing on business development. There are many factors which can affect the recommended level of dividends for the shareholder meeting, and on one hand, these are our development plans, our need for capital, as well as position of the Polish FSA in terms of dividends. This is a policy that's announced at the end of the year. Today it would be premature to talk about any specific level of dividends to be paid out next year. Let's come back to security. Are there any other plans to introduce solutions that would enhance security, for example, behavioral verification, for example, a sudden increase in the number of transactions, maybe notices of logging in, verification of IP addresses, or even approval for each transaction on this, using opt-in for users who are exceptionally susceptible to or sensitive to these type of security issues?
For us, the most important thing is to roll out the mandatory 2FA. Here we are of the opinion that 2FA will enable us to handle a large number of the problems that we've encountered. We're talking about monitoring IP addresses. This is something that we want to introduce. Let me reiterate. Please remember, this is a trading account. We believe that for customers, what's important is for them to be able to gain quick access to their accounts, so these solutions cannot be overly complicated. They have to offer full security, but they can't be overly complicated, and this is what we're aware of. In terms of any type of opt-in approaches, I want to be frank with you. When we, in 2024, introduced 2FA, the interest in this amongst customers was minimal. That's why we made the decision at this time to launch this for all customers.
It seems to me that the initiative is up to us. In many cases, we gave information by email. We sent out information about security. At the end of the day, customers had to make the decision whether or not they wanted to introduce a given type of security, and experience has shown that the interest has not been too great, and that's why we wanted to onboard this for everybody. Every new account in XTB will have that type of security from the get-go. There was something else at the end. Basically, login notifications or maybe approval for every transaction or an opt-in option for users sensitive to security issues. We're not thinking about approval for every transaction because trading, we're talking about quick decisions, quick reactions.
It seems to us that this is not something that's absolutely necessary when we have two-factor authentication, when you log in, as well as when data are changing of passwords, as well as any sort of disposals to pay out funds. Let me add one other thing. I think Filip addressed everything. We would also like to look at behavioral models. If there's some sort of odd behavior on the market, somebody's logging in from a strange place or contributions or payouts, or if they're suspicious, we will react for sure. There might be an email notification or perhaps a short-term block of the account until an additional verification is done. This is something we're going to turn our attention to in the latter half of the year to also follow behavioral aspects. Thank you very much.
The next subject, which our participants are touching on in terms of the market environment. You mentioned that the market environment was not favorable for XTB's results in May and June. Please tell us what type of behavior of the financial market is the most beneficial to build current profitability per lot. I want to tell you that this quarter was quite distinct. We always say that what's important to XTB, these are long, clear trends, and that's true, but let's take a look at what actually happened in Q2. We had a major decline at the beginning of the quarter. When that type of trend appears, then we have a big position that's built. This is linked to losses or profits, but this position was quite large.
At the point in time when there was a reversal of that trend, and that took place on the 10th day of the month, if I remember correctly, then we were on the wrong side of the market because after that, the trend was upwards for a long period of time. What am I trying to convey to you? Before the position was reversed, a little bit of time had to pass. The long-term clear trend is important, but when we have that reversal of the trend until our positions are reversed, well, this is linked to a loss on our side. This is part of the response to that question. Now we have a question about competition. What is your approach to the entrance of Robinhood in Europe? Are you afraid of customer losses in the West?
If so, will you have even higher spend for marketing in order to recover or retain customers? Regardless of Robinhood, in Europe there is competition. Our plans come precisely from our approach to competition. If we want to be that company that is to win this race, in every case, we have to develop, and we have to do that more and more quickly. We have to be aware of the fact that the pace of our growth, if it were satisfactory in previous years, we're one of the fastest-growing players in this area of the market, then we have to continue raising the bar, and this is how we treat business. We treat every project ambitiously, if we're talking about technological development or product development or brand strengthening.
If we're going to be able to be successful in these three elements, regardless of whether we talk about Robinhood or any other company in Europe, there's no reason for us to be frightened or afraid. We have to set very high, ambitious goals. In terms of Robinhood itself, I think it's going to be difficult for it to enter the European market because Robinhood up until now has been accustomed to running business to a large extent in a single country, having similar marketing campaigns with one large marketing budget. Realistically speaking, the single principles from a legal point of view, one onboarding process at the point in time when they want to run their business in Europe, in every country, business is done differently, totally differently. I have a large amount of respect for Robinhood.
We're not afraid of anybody because we're convinced that we're going to be able to achieve our goals. Thank you very much. It seems to me that the list of questions of our participants I'm sorry, we have one more question. Let me go ahead and show you that question in terms about the model for settlements with intermediaries. Here, having in mind optimization of costs, to a large extent, we have narrowed the channels of payments for our customers. We want to encourage our customers to utilize those channels that generate lower costs, and this is something that has largely contributed to cost optimization. This is a process that was launched in the first half of the year, in the first half of the first quarter, and it was run in Q2. We can see major impact in Q2.
This is something that we'll continue to do in subsequent periods. Okay. Thank you very much for that. Let's see if we have any other final questions. There's a question about AI, because the meeting time set aside for this meeting is gradually coming to an end, we can try to sum up things with this final question. Maybe I'll just read it aloud. Will it enable you to reduce IT costs as a percentage of revenue? I don't know if, Filip, you want to start, or should I begin? Go ahead and begin. I'll go ahead and begin.
If we think about AI, regardless of whether we're talking about IT, marketing or customer service or any other department, we've been trying to implement solutions for more than a year in terms of marketing operations or an analytical approach to our activities to automatically generating materials. This is something that we've been looking at or focusing on for a longer period of time. Will this enable us to reduce expenditures to a large extent? Yes, because we're optimizing a large number of projects, regardless of whether or not we're talking about AI chat, we mentioned that in the past, or automating onboarding processes for customers, activities in marketing or backtesting in the tech department. I think a large portion of it is already underway, and the extent is going to be even bigger and bigger.
I don't know, Filip, if you want to add anything at this point in time.
What I want to add is we're not at the point in time that we can estimate the amount of savings from introducing AI. As my colleague said, we're trying to introduce it wherever we can, and the natural trend will be for these savings to appear. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we've spent together nearly an hour. I would like to thank the management team for the presentation and for the responses given to your questions. Many answers were given. If you want to have some more information, we'd invite you to talk to the investor relations team of XTB, and you can use our email address, which is investor.relations@xtb.com. Thank you very much, and we'll wait until we can see you at the next meeting next time.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Bye-bye