XTrade: AOFA licence L15808/BC

The site advertises segregated client funds. What it does not have is a compensation scheme: Belize provides no investor compensation fund, so segregation is a promise by the company rather than a statutory guarantee backed by a payout if the company fails. Contrast that with an onshore-regulated broker, where a compensation scheme typically covers a defined amount per client. This is the single most important practical difference between XTrade and an onshore alternative.

The site states that its entities do not offer services to residents of the United States, Canada, Iran, North Korea, Europe and the United Kingdom, among others. In practice the broker targets clients outside the major regulated markets. If you are in one of the excluded regions, an XTrade account is not available to you, and a locally regulated broker is the better route in any case.

Yes, and it is worth knowing before you fund an account. The broker charges 15 USD per month once an account has had no trading activity for three months. If you intend to hold a balance and trade only occasionally, this charge will erode it.

The help centre says a withdrawal request takes about five business days to process, and warns that banks, card companies or intermediary banks can extend this to as much as three weeks. Withdrawals must be returned by the same route as the deposit: card deposits go back to the card, bank transfers back to the bank account. The broker publishes no withdrawal fee and no minimum withdrawal amount.

By bank transfer or by card. The card schemes listed are Visa, Visa Debit, Visa Electron, Mastercard, Mastercard Debit, Maestro, Delta, Diners and Discover. The broker charges no deposit fee. The stated maximum per transaction is 500,000 USD by bank transfer and 50,000 USD by card. There are no e-wallet and no cryptocurrency funding options.

The broker advertises commission-free trading on fixed spreads. It does not publish a spread table for any instrument, so the actual cost of a trade cannot be checked before you open an account, which is a meaningful transparency gap for a cost-led pitch. Fixed spreads do have a genuine advantage: they do not widen on you during volatile sessions.

Only its own. There is no MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 or cTrader. The broker offers the XTrade WebTrader, a browser platform requiring no download that uses TradingView charting technology, plus its own Android and iOS apps. If you rely on Expert Advisors, custom indicators or automated strategies built for MetaTrader, this broker cannot run them.

Up to 400:1, stated repeatedly across the site. That is far above the 30:1 retail cap applied in the UK, the European Union and Australia, which is a direct consequence of the offshore licensing. High leverage magnifies losses as readily as gains, and at 400:1 a move of a quarter of a percent against a fully leveraged position wipes out the margin behind it.

100 USD. The broker's help centre states this directly and adds that occasional promotions may allow a lower amount. Note that the funding table on the payment page shows figures under a 'Min. Deposit' heading that do not agree with this and appear to be mislabelled maximums, so treat 100 USD as the account minimum.

Nothing found in this review supports calling it a scam. The brand is long-established, the operating company genuinely exists on the Belize registry and is active, the Belize securities licence is real and in force, the contact details are complete and specific, and the site does not hide who runs it.

What it is, accurately, is a high-risk offshore broker with unverified forex authorisation. The gap between what the site claims and what can be confirmed is real: no forex-scoped permission was confirmed for the operating company, the South African licence belongs to a different company, and the operating company was incorporated three years after the founding date the site advertises. Deposit accordingly.

The operating company is Xtrade International Ltd, a Belize International Business Company. Its registry record shows company number 151830, incorporation on 22 January 2015, active status, and a registered office at No. 35 New Road, 2nd Floor Flat, Belize City. The same record shows the company was previously named Financial Arena Ltd. Two sister companies are named on the site: Peak Wealth PTY Ltd (South Africa) and Blacsley Como Ltd (Comoros).

Only offshore, and not in the way the marketing implies. The broker's own Licences and Regulations page says the trading service is operated by Xtrade International Ltd and licensed by the Belize Financial Services Commission under number 4705379. Two other authorisations belong to other companies in the group: South African licence FSP44681 is held by Peak Wealth PTY Ltd, and Comoros authorisation L15808/BC is held by Blacsley Como Ltd.

Two things a prospective client should know. First, none of this is onshore supervision of the company that takes your deposit. Second, the only Belize permission this review could trace to Xtrade International Ltd is a securities trading licence, and its stated scope does not extend to forex or CFD dealing. Treat the regulation as thin rather than absent.