Market Equity: VFSC licence 40221

Yes, all three live accounts are advertised as swap free, and the site directs clients to its swap rates page for the detail behind that. Because the terms of a swap free offering can be conditional, it is worth confirming the conditions with support before relying on it for long held positions.

The broker's terms state that it does not offer its services to citizens or residents of the United States, Belize or the member states of the European Union, and its site-wide risk warning adds Russia, North Korea, Iran and Myanmar. Worth knowing before you apply: the account opening form itself presents the full international country list and does not enforce these restrictions, so being able to complete registration is not confirmation that your jurisdiction is served.

The site publishes forex, commodities, shares, futures, indices and CFDs, each with its own product page, plus contract specifications, swap rates and futures expiry schedules. Exact instrument counts are not published, so the size of the offering in each class cannot be stated.

Maximum leverage is 1:500 on the ECN and Money Back accounts, and 1:200 on the Scalping account. Neither Vanuatu nor Mauritius imposes the retail leverage caps that apply in the United Kingdom, the European Union or Australia, so this level of leverage would not be available to a retail client from an onshore-regulated firm.

MetaTrader 5 is the only platform. The broker provides a branded Windows installer along with Mac, web terminal, iOS and Android access, running on the MarketEquityInc-Live and MarketEquityInc-Demo servers. No MetaTrader 4 offering and no proprietary platform are published.

The site does not publish a withdrawal processing time for any channel. It states only that transfer times vary by the bank or payment provider involved and advises clients to check with their own institution. Because no committed timeframe is published, the speed of a withdrawal cannot be established in advance from the broker's own material.

Nine channels are published: Visa, Master Card, K-Net, Sticpay, Neteller, Skrill, DusuPay, Virtual Pay and FasaPay. The broker accepts funds only from an account or card in the client's own name and refuses third party payments, and card deposits must be withdrawn back to the card they came from. Withdrawal fees are published for only two of the nine channels, so the cost of taking money out is not fully disclosed before you deposit.

It depends on the account. The ECN account charges $8 per lot in commission with spreads from 0.0, while the Money Back and Scalping accounts charge no commission but start at 14 ticks. The Money Back account also returns 3 ticks per trade. For many clients the larger cost is the deposit fee, which runs from 0.5% to 5.5% depending on the channel used.

The minimum deposit is $100 on all three live accounts. Individual funding channels set their own minimums, and two are lower than the account minimum: DusuPay from $20 and Virtual Pay from $50. All accounts are denominated in USD.

The site states that Market Equity is jointly owned and operated by two affiliated companies. Market Equity INC is incorporated in Vanuatu with registered office at Govant Building, First Floor, Kumul Highway, Port Vila, and appears on the GLEIF Legal Entity Identifier record as an active company registered since 27 November 2017. Market Equity Capital LTD is stated to be incorporated in Mauritius as company C222538 at Sterling Tower, Port Louis.

Nothing found in this research indicates fraud. The operating company is real and independently traceable, its two offices and telephone numbers are published, and its account, fee and funding terms are disclosed in full. The genuine concern is protection rather than existence: both licences are offshore, neither jurisdiction runs an investor compensation scheme, and the broker makes no published commitment to hold client money separately from its own.

Market Equity claims regulation in two offshore jurisdictions and holds no onshore licence. Its site states that Market Equity INC is licensed by the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission under number 40221, and that affiliate Market Equity Capital LTD holds Mauritius Financial Services Commission licence GB24203983. Neither claim was confirmed against the issuing authority's own public register during this research, so both are treated as claimed rather than confirmed.