Beware! 24CFD is an offshore broker! Your investment may be at risk.
RECOMMENDED FOREX BROKERS
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Open trading accounts with at least two brokers.
24CFD is a CFD, cryptocurrency, forex and binary options broker. From the website of the company, you can see that it offers a lot of trading tools to its clients. Whether this broker is safe to trade with or not, we are about to find out.
24CFD Regulation and safety of funds
From the company’s website we find out the address to be in London, UK. We checked with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) that regulates forex companies in UK, to see if the company is in the register (screenshot below). It is not! A forex company that is operating from UK but is not licensed by FCA is most probably scam and we warn you to stay away from it if you don’t want to lose your hard-earned money.
Another thing you should know about forex companies trading in binary options – if they are operating outside of the USA (there are only two licensed binary options exchanges in US), they are not regulated! In addition to that, forex brokers trading in binary options are banned in EU which is another proof that this broker is not legit!
If you are looking for a licensed forex broker which will provide a guarantee for the safety of your funds, then you should research the forex brokers licensed in the well-established jurisdictions of EU, UK, US, Australia and New Zealand. Only those brokers can provide safety for your funds and you can be assured that they are not scammers. There is an easy explanation why we think so. First of all, forex brokers regulated in EU and UK must provide an initial capital of no less than 730,000 EUR. In the US, the amount of the initial capital is much higher – 20 million USD. This is the first step to screen off scammers as they wouldn’t bother to invest so much money just to rob you of your funds. In second place, licensed forex brokers must contribute to a compensation scheme from which, in case of bankruptcy, traders will be compensated by up to 20,000 EUR per trader if the company is regulated by CySEC or up to 85,000 GBP per trader if the company is regulated by FCA. Do you think scammers would do that? In third place, licensed forex brokers must report their deals on a daily basis to prove that their transactions are legitimate. Again, it is a way of warding off scammers, so you may rest assured that nobody will mess up with your money.
24CFD Trading software
Let’s take a look at the trading software that 24CFD offers to its clients. In the screenshot below, you see an integrated trading platform. If you are new to the trade with binary options, we can tell you that this is a ‘yes – no’ type of trade where traders bet on the proposition and they either win or lose. It resembles very much gambling and contains a lot of risks for financial loss.
What you see on the left of the image is the menu with its trade, deposit, withdrawal, etc. options and on the right you have the assets. In this case, it is currency pairs, but it can be also cryptocurrency, CFDs, etc. You also see the price of each currency pair and the percentage of return. In the center of the screen, you see the fluctuation in price of the EUR/USD currency pair which price happens to be 1.17837. On the right, you can choose the buy or sell option and set the position. On the company website, we find that spreads start from 1 pip which is quite good. However, the leverage is 1:1000! Such high leverage is extremely risky. It looks tempting and is luring the traders with a promise for a big win, but when you realise that 70% of traders experience financial loss and having in mind how high the leverage is, you can only imagine what that means for your funds! Just for comparison, we want to mention that in EU leverage cannot exceed 1:30 and in the US it cannot be over 1:50. These are measures to prevent traders from taking risks with their funds.
With the type of binary options trading, you don’t have much say or control over the transactions, you just sit and wait to win or lose. If this is not your type of making money, we want to suggest to you other trading platforms that have proven excellent records in forex trading – MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5. Not by chance they are considered the Rolls-Royces of trading platforms and number one choice for around 80% of the brokers. Among their excellent qualities we want to mention the auto trading option, the financial calendar and app market, VPS and code base with customs scripts.
We advise you when you look for a legitimate and licensed broker, to choose one that offers one of these platforms.
24CFD Deposit/Withdrawal methods and fees
24CFD provides trading in forex, binary options, stock and cryptocurrency all in one account as per the company’s website. However, in Terms and Conditions document, we found mentioned 5 accounts – Standard, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Diamond. However, except for the user balance that is mentioned, there is no other information about these accounts. Again, we are not happy about how the information is organised and presented. Information about the account types and what they entail should be visible and readily accessible on any self-respecting forex company. The fact that it is not on this company’s website, says a lot about this broker.
On the company’s website, we see advertised $10 minimum deposit, but when we opened an account and checked how to deposit funds, the minimum amount available as an option was $250.This discrepancy is not to the client’s advantage and may be an unpleasant surprise if you are ready to put in $10 and the system asks you instead for $250! This again confirms our believe that we should not trust this broker!
The company provides several payment methods to feed the account – VISA, MasterCard, Skrill, Neteller, Bitcoin, Payeer, WebMoney, Airtm, Perfect Money and bank wire.
The withdrawal processing time may take up to 10 business days which is extremely long!
As any shady broker does, 24CFD offers bonuses and one time trading credits to ‘reward’ its clients. However, it is not really a reward but a trap! In order to be able to withdraw any available funds from the account, the client must make transaction that are the volume of 30 times the value of the bonus, i.e., if you receive 100 USD, you must execute trade of 3,000 USD in order to make any withdrawals from your account. Imagine what mess that will create with your funds.
How does scam work?
No one wants to be duped by scammers, but it happens all the time because they know how to manipulate people. As they say in one popular song “sweet dreams are made of this” and this is what scammers rely on – creating in people’s mind a sweet dream of being rich! Scams usually start by unsolicited telephone calls or ads on the Internet or social media promising quick and easy profit. It is easy to fall into scammers’ trap and once you make a deposit, you are done for! Scammers won’t let you get away easily even if you realise that you are being scammed. They will try to delay you when you try to withdraw your funds by asking you to provide this document or fill out this form, etc., in order to make you miss the deadline when you can file for chargeback.
What to do if scammed?
You need to act very quickly. First of all, if you have made a deposit using a credit card, you must immediately file for chargeback. Fortunately, VISA and MasterCard allow for 540 day period in which you can file for chargeback. This is the good news. The bad news is that if you have made a deposit using bank wire or Bitcoin, the chances of you getting your funds back are nil!
Another thing you can do is cancel your credit card if the scammers have your CVV code. Check your PC and erase the software that gives scammers access to your personal data.
Be careful, because even doing all that we recommended, your unfortunate experience with scammers may not be over. There are the so-called recovery agents. One of those may approach you offering to recover your funds for a fee. Do not trust them and always check the legitimacy of the recovery agent and the agency.
Also, be aware that some “victims” of scam may post comments after the review, saying how they lost money and how a recovery agent helped them retrieve their funds. They will even put the contact info for this so-called recovery agent. Do not trust them either as it is another case of scam!
