Risk scorecard
Each area is scored 0 (clean) to 10 (worst). Higher means more risk.
Regulation
10/10 · CriticalNo licence in any register we searched, while taking deposits, plus a company number presented as regulation and two regulators claimed that were never held.
Identity & transparency
9/10 · CriticalNo UK company behind the UK branding, an invalid UK postcode, a Saint Vincent entity with a Bulgarian village as its office, and blank About, Documents and Regulation pages; the contract at least disclosed an entity number.
Withdrawals & conduct
8/10 · CriticalRepeated fund integrity accounts on four platforms with named amounts of 200 to 4,700 US dollars, withdrawals unapproved and balances zeroed, and no company responses; not corroborated by a regulator or chargeback record.
Reputation
8/10 · CriticalUniformly negative across Turkish complaint platforms and broker review sites, a fraudulent certificate allegation, and a reported Turkish blocking order; no verified tier one warning notice.
Website claims
10/10 · CriticalClaimed an EU regulator it never had, sold an offshore company number as supervision, advertised 10 or more years of experience on a 2018 operation, and said it did not serve Turkey while running a Turkish site.
Operational history
7/10 · HighAbout five years of real activity from 2018, but the advertised history was inflated, the company could not be dated, six replacement domains were churned through, and the operation has since vanished.
Who they are
A quick desk file on the company behind the brand.
What this business actually was, based on its own documents and the registers we opened:
- Brand: Lidya FX, also written LidyaFX, LidyaForex and LidyaTrade.
- Legal entity: the client contract names 'Lidya Trade', an International Business Company incorporated in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, registration 48211 IBC 2017. The website instead used 'LidyaTrade Ltd.', which is not a registered UK company.
- Registered: the contract gives a registered office at Dyadovsko Village 6705, Kardzhali province, Chernoochene municipality, Bulgaria. That is a village in Bulgaria, not an office in Saint Vincent.
- Website: lidyatrade.com, which no longer exists in the domain system. Client logins ran through clientzone3.lidyaportal.com, and the public site rotated through lidyafx21, lidyafx23, lidyafx46, lidyafx48 and lidyafx50 dot com.
- Only licence: none. No financial regulator anywhere lists this business.
- Offers: forex, metals, indices, commodities, crypto and US shares on MT4 and MT5, leverage to 1:200, first deposit from 300 to 500 US dollars, with 10 to 50 percent deposit and account transfer bonuses.
- Not accepted: the footer said the service was not directed at residents of the United States, North Korea or Turkey, yet the whole site was published in Turkish with a Turkish mobile number, plus Farsi and Arabic versions.
- Age claim: the 2023 homepage advertised '10+ years of experience', '130+ employees' and '5400+ active traders'. The oldest domain we could date was registered in June 2018.
Regulation
Who really oversees this broker, and what each licence is worth to you.
Proof of regulation on an official register: No
We could not confirm this broker on any genuine regulator’s register.
Licences the broker publishes
Financial Services Authority, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Financial Conduct Authority
Unnamed European Union regulator
Found by our investigation (1) — the broker does not list these on its own site
Vanuatu Financial Services Commission
Found by us — not listed by the broker
Why we reached this verdict
How the evidence adds up.
We did not find one single knockout document, such as a warning notice from a major regulator naming this website. What we found instead is five separate strong findings that all point the same way, from five different kinds of source.
- No licence, anywhere. We drove the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission searches ourselves. The Financial Dealers Licensee list has 66 entries and none of them contains 'Lidya'. The Vanuatu entity search across companies, business names, charitable associations and international companies returns nothing for 'Lidya' either. So the Vanuatu licence that third parties reported this broker displaying does not exist in the Vanuatu records.
- A company registration sold as regulation. Every page of the 45 page client contract is footed with the line 'Registered in the Financial Services Authority Saint Vincent, Registration number 48211', and the regulation page said the firm was 'registered with the FSA of St Vincent and the Grenadines'. That number is an International Business Company number. The Saint Vincent FSA does not issue forex licences, a point it made publicly in January 2023 when it began demanding that SVG companies doing forex show a licence from somewhere else. Presenting an offshore company number as supervision is misrepresentation, not paperwork.
- Two regulators claimed that were never held. The English regulation page said the firm had 'made application to the UK FCA and awaits further instruction from them'. A client review from November 2018 shows the sales team was telling people the FCA licence would arrive 'by December'. Worse, the Turkish legal documents page told Turkish readers their funds were protected 'under our EU regulator'. The firm's own contract is governed by the law of Saint Vincent and names no EU authority anywhere in 45 pages. The broker contradicted itself in its own documents.
- A UK identity that does not exist. The site branded itself a Birmingham company with a UK landline. We searched the UK company register: there is no LidyaTrade Ltd, and none of the fifteen UK companies containing 'Lidya' is this business. We then checked the published postcode, B1 5NB, against the UK postcode data. It is not a valid postcode. A firm taking deposits under a British address that cannot exist is not a filing error.
- Clients report their money did not come back. Across four platforms, different users describe one repeated mechanism: deposit accepted, withdrawal request not approved or endlessly delayed, balance reduced to zero, account closed, then nobody reachable. Named figures include a 3,700 dollar withdrawal promised 'tomorrow' and never paid, a 500 dollar account closed on a withdrawal attempt, and a 4,700 dollar balance wiped inside a week. That is a fund integrity pattern, not a complaint about spreads.
Two more things fit the same picture. The contract charges the client a 150 US dollar 'research fee' before the company will investigate their own fraud complaint, and blacklists clients who go to their bank for a chargeback. And Turkey's Capital Markets Board ordered access blocked to lidyafx50.com and clientzone3.lidyaportal.com in its March 2023 bulletin, alongside criminal referrals for unlicensed capital markets activity. We could not open that bulletin ourselves, so we weigh it as reported rather than as a document we read.
We stop short of calling this proven. A confirmed verdict needs two decisive primary records, such as a named warning notice or an enforcement order we read in full. We have five strong ones instead, so the honest answer is that this was very probably a scam.
On age: the operation was genuinely real for several years. The oldest domain we could date, lidyafx.com, was registered on 16 June 2018, and the site ran until mid 2023. Treat about eight years as an upper bound, because the Saint Vincent company register is not public and we could not date the company itself.
Evidence ledger
Every finding, with its source and how strongly it points.
E1The main website of the broker no longer exists. A DNS lookup for lidyatrade.com returns NXDOMAIN, meaning the domain is not registered at all, and the registry has no record for it.
ModerateGoogle Public DNSE2The broker's own regulation page states that it is 'registered with the FSA of St Vincent and the Grenadines' and that it 'has made application to the UK FCA and awaits further instruction from them'. It names no licence number and no supervisor.
E3The Turkish legal documents page told Turkish clients that their funds and transactions were secured and protected under 'our EU regulator'. No EU authority ever supervised this firm.
E4The 45 page client agreement states the contracting company is Lidya Trade, incorporated under the laws of Saint Vincent with registration 48211 IBC 2017, with a registered office in Dyadovsko Village, Kardzhali, Bulgaria. Every page is footed 'Registered in the Financial Services Authority Saint Vincent, Registration number 48211', and clause 39 puts the contract under Saint Vincent law. No regulator and no EU authority appears anywhere in the document.
E5The Vanuatu Financial Services Commission Financial Dealers Licensee list holds 66 licensees. Filtering it for Lidya returns no matching records, so the Vanuatu forex licence reported elsewhere does not exist.
E6The Vanuatu register search across companies, business names, charitable associations and international companies returns no results for Lidya, so no Vanuatu company of that name is recorded either.
E7A search of the UK company register for LidyaTrade returns no results. A wider search for Lidya returns fifteen unrelated companies, none of them a Birmingham forex business. The UK entity the website claimed does not exist.
E8The postcode published in the broker's Birmingham address, B1 5NB, is not a valid UK postcode. A control check on a known postcode in the same service returns valid, so the failure is in the address and not the check.
E9The 2023 homepage advertises 19 Boroughbridge Road, Birmingham, B1 5NB, a UK landline, a Turkish, Farsi and Arabic site, and states the service is not directed at residents of Turkey. Its Regulation, Documents and About Us pages contain no content at all.
E10The March 2023 site advertises '10+ years of experience', '130+ employees' and '5400+ active traders', with deposit bonuses of 10 to 50 percent, on an operation whose oldest datable domain was registered in June 2018. It also links its client area at clientzone3.lidyaportal.com.
E11The oldest domain in this family, lidyafx.com, was registered on 16 June 2018 and is now parked and offered for sale through a domain marketplace. This sets the verified start of the operation at 2018.
E12The broker's review page carries two accounts. One from April 2019 states that lidyatrade.com is a scam and that the licence certificate was photoshopped, and that the Vanuatu commission and the FCA were informed. One from November 2018 is positive and reports being told the FCA licence would arrive by December. The page is marked out of business with the website down as at October 2023.
E13Turkish consumer complaint platforms carry repeated first person accounts against this brand describing the same failure: deposits accepted, withdrawal requests not approved or delayed indefinitely, balances reduced to zero, accounts closed, and the company then unreachable. Amounts named include 3,700, 4,700, 500 and 200 US dollars. Users also describe daily sales calls before the deposit and pressure to top up afterwards.
E14An independent broker directory records the website as lidyatrade.com and states that no regulatory licence, oversight or registration number for this broker can be found in the public registers of the FCA, CySEC, ASIC, the CFTC or comparable authorities. It also records zero estimated visits to the site in May, June and July 2026.
E15Trustpilot holds no reviews at all for lidyatrade.com and records that the company website has closed, which independently confirms the operation has ceased.
E16The client agreement charges the client a 150 US dollar research fee before the company will investigate a fraud complaint about a transaction, treats a bank chargeback as fraudulent if the client does not assist the company, freezes the disputed deposit as pending, and keeps a blacklist of banned clients. It also lets the company withdraw its services at any time without giving a reason.
E17The Saint Vincent Financial Services Authority notice of January 2023 requires companies wanting to do forex business to produce a licence from the jurisdiction where the activity is carried out. The authority does not itself license forex, so describing an SVG registration as being regulated by it is misleading.
The other side
The strongest case in this broker’s favour.
The fair case for this broker, and what actually happened to each part of it:
- It was a real business, not a two week pop up. That is true. There is a continuous archived history from 2019 to mid 2023, a 45 page client agreement, MT4 and MT5 platforms, three language versions and a working client area. A pure fraud template usually has none of that.
- An offshore company is not automatically a scam. Also true. Hundreds of genuine brokers hold only offshore permissions. Being registered in Saint Vincent is a risk tier, not proof of dishonesty. What tipped this case was not the offshore structure but describing that structure as regulation, and then inventing an EU regulator for Turkish readers.
- Maybe the FCA application was genuine. Possible, and a pending application is not a lie in itself. But a firm cannot take retail deposits while it waits, and the sales team was already promising clients the licence was weeks away. That converts an application into a selling point it was never entitled to be.
- The complaints could be planted. Competitors do write fake scam reviews, so we checked. These accounts sit on four unrelated platforms, span years rather than one burst, name different amounts, and none of them recommends a rival broker. There is also a positive review from November 2018 praising the spreads, which is what a genuine mixed record looks like. We could not open the individual Turkish threads directly, so we treat the pattern as consistent rather than individually audited.
- The photoshopped certificate claim is one person talking. Correct, and we treat it that way. A user posted in April 2019 that the licence certificate was fake and that the Vanuatu regulator and the FCA had been informed. Other review sites later reported the certificate belonged to a different company. We could not open those pages or see the certificate, so this stays a supporting detail and carries no weight in the verdict.
- The business is dead, so nobody is being harmed today. Largely true, and it matters. The main domain is not registered, lidyafx.com is parked and offered for sale, and there is no live signup funnel. The remaining risk is to former clients still owed money, and to anyone who buys the lapsed domains and revives the brand.
What would change this
What we would need to see to revise the verdict.
This verdict is not fixed. Specific things would move it, in both directions.
- Toward confirmed scam: the Turkish Capital Markets Board bulletin of March 2023, read in full and naming lidyafx50.com, would be a regulator action against this exact operation. So would any warning notice from the FCA, the Vanuatu commission or another authority naming lidyatrade.com or LidyaTrade Ltd.
- Also toward confirmed: the Vanuatu certificate itself, shown to belong to a different licensed company, would prove borrowed credentials rather than merely absent ones.
- Also toward confirmed: a single credible, dated account of the company demanding an extra payment, a tax or a fee before releasing a withdrawal. That mechanic has no honest version.
- Toward a milder verdict: a Saint Vincent registry extract confirming Lidya Trade, number 48211, was a properly incorporated and current company, together with evidence that client money was held with a segregated third party and that withdrawals were being paid up to the closure. That would move this toward a failed offshore business rather than a probable scam.
- Also milder: documented evidence that clients were repaid when the operation wound down in 2023. We found none.
- What would not change it: more positive reviews, or an offshore licence appearing now. The findings that carry this report are the false UK identity, the invented EU regulator and the company number sold as supervision. Those are in the firm's own documents and a later licence would not undo them.
Check it yourself
Official registers and warning lists. Verify every claim first-hand.
Vanuatu Financial Services Commission: Financial Dealers Licensee list
The full list of Vanuatu forex licensees. Search it for Lidya and you get no match.
Vanuatu Financial Services Commission: entity search
Searches every Vanuatu company register. No Lidya entity is recorded.
UK Companies House: search for LidyaTrade
Shows that no UK company called LidyaTrade Ltd has ever been registered.
Trustpilot page for lidyatrade.com
Zero reviews, and Trustpilot records that the company website has closed.
Frequently asked questions
Quick answers about this broker’s safety.
Is Lidya FX a scam?
Very probably yes. It took client deposits with no licence from any financial regulator, described a Saint Vincent company number as regulation, claimed an EU regulator it never had, and published a UK address whose postcode does not exist. Clients on four platforms report that their withdrawals were refused and their balances zeroed.
Is Lidya FX regulated?
No. We searched the Vanuatu licensee list and every Vanuatu company register, and the UK company register, and found nothing. The firm's own client contract names no regulator and is governed by the law of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Is the website still working?
No. lidyatrade.com is not even a registered domain any more, so it cannot be visited at all. The related lidyafx.com is a parking page offered for sale. The last archived working version of the site is from mid 2023.
Was Lidya FX a British company?
No. It presented itself as a Birmingham firm called LidyaTrade Ltd with a UK phone number, but no such UK company exists and the postcode it published, B1 5NB, is not a valid UK postcode. Its own contract says the company is a Saint Vincent International Business Company, number 48211 IBC 2017.
What is a Saint Vincent IBC registration worth to me as a client?
Nothing in terms of protection. It is a company incorporation, like registering a business name, and it gives you no supervision, no capital requirements and no compensation fund. The Saint Vincent authority does not issue forex licences, and since January 2023 it has asked SVG companies doing forex to show a licence from a real regulator elsewhere.
The site said it had applied to the FCA. Does that count?
No. An application is not an authorisation, and a firm cannot lawfully take retail deposits while it waits. Sales staff were telling clients in late 2018 that the FCA licence would arrive within weeks. It never did, and the firm was never on the FCA register.
Can I still get my money back?
It is difficult but worth trying. There is no company left to pay you and no regulator to order a refund. Your best route is a chargeback through your bank or card issuer, with the exact dates and amounts. Do it quickly, because card scheme time limits are strict.
Was my money ever kept safe and separate?
Not in the way a regulated broker does it. The client agreement says deposits sit in an omnibus account pooled with other clients' money, and that the company accepts no liability if a bank or third party fails. Without a regulator there was nobody checking that the pool matched what clients were owed.
Why did the site keep changing to numbered addresses like lidyafx50.com?
Because the operation was aimed at Turkish clients and Turkey blocks unlicensed forex websites. Each time a domain was blocked the operator moved to the next number. We traced at least lidyafx21, lidyafx23, lidyafx46, lidyafx48 and lidyafx50, plus the client login at lidyaportal.com.
Was Lidya FX a clone of another broker?
We found no evidence that it copied a specific well known brand's name or licence number, so we do not classify it as a clone. Independent reviewers did report that a Vanuatu licence certificate it displayed belonged to a different company, but we could not see the certificate or verify that ourselves.
How old was the business really?
The oldest domain we could date was registered on 16 June 2018, and the site ran until about mid 2023. So roughly five years of real trading. That should be treated as an upper bound because the Saint Vincent register is not public and we could not date the company. The 2023 homepage claimed 10 or more years of experience, which was not true.
There are hardly any reviews on Trustpilot. Does that mean it was fine?
No. Trustpilot has zero reviews for lidyatrade.com, but the complaints are on Turkish consumer platforms because that is where the clients were. Look where a broker actually sold, not only at the best known review site.
Someone contacted me offering to recover my Lidya FX deposit. Should I pay?
No. Former victims of collapsed brokers are routinely approached a second time by recovery scams that take an upfront fee and disappear. Deal only with your own bank, your national regulator or the police, and never pay a fee to get your own money back.
What should I check before depositing with any broker?
Three things, all free. Find the licence number on the regulator's own register and confirm it names the exact company that will hold your money. Check the company exists in its stated country's company register. Check the published address and postcode are real. Lidya FX failed all three in a few minutes.
What we recommend
The practical takeaway from everything above.
Do not send money to this brand or to any site reviving it.
- Do not deposit. There is no licence, no compensation scheme and no functioning company to complain to.
- Treat any revival with suspicion. lidyatrade.com is unregistered and lidyafx.com is being offered for sale, so anyone can buy the names and reuse the brand and the old testimonials. A new Lidya FX site would be a new operator, not a returning broker.
- If you lost money, act on the payment, not the broker. Ask your bank or card issuer for a chargeback and give them the dates and amounts. Card scheme deadlines are strict, so do this before anything else.
- Report it. Clients in Turkey should file with the Capital Markets Board and the police. Clients elsewhere should report to their own national financial regulator, naming lidyatrade.com and the numbered lidyafx domains.
- Ignore anyone offering to recover your funds for a fee. Former clients of collapsed brokers are targeted a second time by recovery scams. No legitimate service asks for money up front to get your deposit back.
- Before any future broker, do the two checks we did here. Search the regulator's own register for the exact company name, and check that the company and the address on the website actually exist. Both took minutes and both failed for this firm.
This is an independent assessment of risk, not a legal ruling. Scores and verdicts follow the Wikilix broker-safety methodology and can change as new evidence appears. Review scores are treated with caution when a broker’s reviews look manipulated. Last reviewed September 1, 2026. If any detail here is out of date or incorrect, or you represent this broker, please contact us.