Caution! Oanda FxTrade is an offshore company! Your funds may be at risk.
Professional as the Oanda FxTrade website might look at first glance, this is nothing more than a virtually anonymous scam website which has stolen the name of one of the biggest brokers on the U.S. market – OANDA.
We can assure you that OANDA has absolutely nothing to do with the bogus website here, so if you are still considering the possibility of trading forex pairs, indices, shares, futures, cryptocurrencies, precious metals and energy commodities with the seemingly lucrative trading conditions advertised in the presentation, better think twice and read the following lines.
Oanda FxTrade Regulation and Safety of Funds
Oanda FxTrade is an example of a clone website, a particularly dangerous kind of scam, where fraudsters use the license and other corporate details – in this case, the very name – of a legit and regulated broker in an apparent attempt to scam traders.
Apart from that, not surprisingly, Oanda FxTrade does not have a legit forex license either, and that alone should be more than enough for you to realize that you are dealing with an outright scam.
Otherwise, Oanda FxTrade claims to be headquartered in Austria. Still, again, given the fact that you have no way to verify your new broker's credentials in the registers of any official regulatory institution, you simply have no reason to believe anything the broker might claim.
As a matter of fact, going through the website's Terms and Conditions, we came across a reference to the offshore jurisdiction of Vanuatu – the agreement between the client and the website, we were told, shall be governed according to the laws of Vanuatu. You should agree, however, that a possible offshore registration like this does not help the website's credibility either.
What are the dangers of dealing with unlicensed Forex brokers?
According to a recent press release by the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, the authorities in Finland, Germany, Belgium and Latvia, with the support of Eurojust, have busted the operators of several fraudulent online investment platforms that have defrauded victims from 11 countries out of several million euros.
The investigation reveals that victims were directed to seemingly reputable online trading platforms in search of lucrative investments. Through these platforms, they were promised enormous profits in a short time by trading in cryptocurrencies, forex and shares.
It is believed that in Germany alone, victims were tricked out of approximately 4,3 million EUR.
The regulatory system in the EU
If you have made sure that you are dealing with a properly regulated broker, you should not worry about getting scammed. To begin with, all adequately authorized brokers in the 27 EU member states should be licensed by at least one official financial regulator, for example, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) or BaFin in Germany and should hold at least 730 000 EUR in operational capital with which to cover all outstanding payments toward traders.
On top of that all, all clients' money should be kept segregated, protected from creditors trust accounts. At the same time, brokers should participate in client compensation schemes, basically insuring the funds in your trading account for at least 20 000 EUR. EU traders are also offered negative balance protection.
In addition, under a newly adopted piece of EU legislation called Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA), all crypto issuers and exchanges will have to follow specific rules if they want to continue to operate within the region. The new regulations include a capital adequacy requirement for all stable coin issuers and daily transaction limits for stablecoins that have become too large.
Offshore brokers' scam tricks:
And here is a quick review of the most common tricks scammers usually resort to when pocketing your cash.
Bonuses with unfair withdrawal requirement
Attractive as a trading bonus might seem, as offered by scam websites like the one we are talking about here, it always comes with strings attached – some minimum trade volume requirement, which basically will prevent you from making any withdrawals. So our best advice in such cases, apart from avoiding unregulated brokers altogether, is always to read the fine script, especially regarding trading bonuses or promotions.
Fake profits and enormous fees
You should be aware as well of the ridiculous withdrawal processing and handling fees, as well as the so-called “profit fees”, which as a matter of fact, you will be required to pay every time you request a withdrawal, no matter if your request is latter approved or not. The funny thing is that such fees can easily exceed 20%, which is simply outrageous.
Guaranteed earnings
And bear in mind that any broker that promises you guaranteed returns or risk-free trades is obviously about to scam you. On the contrary, legit and regulated brokers are even required to warn you about the dangers of trading leveraged instruments and the high probability that you are about to lose your funds.
If you spot any of these, you may as well trust the red lamps because they'll undoubtedly start flashing!
Oanda FxTrade Trading Software
Oanda FxTrade promises some award-winning trading platforms, but in reality, it offers just a funny-looking web-based trader, which you may check on the screenshot below.
Whatever the story, bear in mind that if your new broker fails to present you with proven and reliable trading software, like, for example, the industry standard MetaTrader4 and MetaTrader5, this is yet another clear sign that you are about to get scammed.
With a 4,5 star rating, based on some 403 thousand reviews and well over 10 million downloads at Google Play, MetaTrader5 is undeniably the most popular trading platform in the forex industry ever.
And there is a good reason for that. Featuring real-time quotes, financial news and various FX and stock charts, an MT5 will also allow you to run algorithmic trading sessions with the help of specially designed trading bots called Expert Advisors, which you can also quite easily customize on a proprietary scripting language MQL5 – an object-oriented high-level programming language intended for writing automated trading strategies and custom technical indicators.
In addition, MT5 also supports well over 80 built-in technical indicators and analytical objects, with the option to keep simultaneously up to 100 charts in 21 different time frames, from one minute to one month – an opportunity designed to allow you to examine both short term price fluctuations and long term trends.
On top of that, all MetaTrader 5 servers are hosted at Equinix, one of the finest digital infrastructure providers globally, with 240 data centres in 27 countries on all five continents. The MetaTrader5 servers are located in London (LD4), New York (NY4) and Hong Kong (HK1), as well as in Amsterdam, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, Lagos and Johannesburg.
Oanda FxTrade Trading Conditions
Oanda FxTrade promises a spread starting virtually from zero. Still, since the website is not to be trusted anyway, being a virtually anonymous clone website and all, here you may find as well our list of brokers offering tight spreads for real:
As for the maximum leverage, it is said to be as high as 1:500, but again, given the fact that we are dealing with a clone website scam, here you may also find our list of brokers offering leverage as high as 1:500 as well.
Oanda FxTrade Deposit/Withdrawal Methods and Fees
Oanda FxTrade says to accept payments with credit cards, cryptocurrency, e-wallets or bank transfers, but in reality, it accepts Bitcoins only. And that is not surprising either, given that a bitcoin transaction can not be reversed no matter what, not even if you realize you have been scammed. And that is not all. Bear in mind that you can never tell to whom the bitcoin wallet you send your cash belongs to.
If your payment is made in a more conventional way, on the other hand, like with your VISA or Mastercard, and all of a sudden something goes wrong – you get scammed for example – you will still have a way out of the unpleasant situation by filing for a charge back at the bank that has issued your debit or credit card. Something which we would generally advise you to do immediately in case you happen to be dealing with unregulated scammers like Oanda FxTrade.
As far as the minimum deposit requirement is concerned, it is said to be just 50 USD, but again, that certainly does not change the fact that you are dealing with an outright scam.
Conclusion
Oanda FxTrade is a clone firm you should avoid at every cost.