Trading foreign currencies directly, i.e. without using a broker as an intermediary, is not possible for small scale retail customers, but only for those institutional investors who can afford to invest big sums and are willing to hold the purchased currency for long periods. Individual traders can only trade via a trading platform and can only get access to such a platform via a forex broker, which either uses its own proprietary platform or holds a license for such a platform, such as the MetaTrader4 platform.