Beware! GlobalPairs 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.
The GlobalPairs website throws at us buzzwords like “Artificial Intelligence”, “NFTs”, “Augmented Reality”, “Blockchain” and “Decentralized Finance” and promises to make us part of the rapid change in the world. Closer inspection reveals that this is supposed to be a forex and CFD broker. And even closer inspection reveals that this is in fact a typical scam. This is a completely anonymous website that has no legal authorization to provide the financial services it claims.
GLOBALPAIRS REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
When you visit the website of a legitimate broker you can expect to find clear and detailed information about the company that owns and operates it, where it is based and what regulatory regimes it is subject to.
This website informs us only that “GlobalPair is a worldwide brand committed to your trading experience”. Even the Terms and Conditions do not state the name of the legal entity that owns and operates GlobalPairs. There is no address, and the only method of contact is email.
A careful reading of the Terms and Conditions reveals a clause stating that the GlobalPairs must be based in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).
We do not find any company whose name contains “GlobalPairs” in the Financial Services Authority of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVGFSA) database. But even if the anonymous owner of the website is registered there, this gives absolutely no guarantees to the clients. SVG is an offshore area, infamous for the lack of regulations for brokers. The SVGFS specifically warns that it does not license or supervise brokers.
You should only trust legitimate brokers operating in one of the established financial centres like the UK, EU, USA or Australia. There, the activities of brokers are controlled by powerful regulatory bodies such as UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in US or Australian Securities and Exchanges Commission (ASIC). Clients of these brokers receive protections such as negative balance protection and segregation of the client’s funds from the broker’s funds.
In the EU and the UK, brokers must also participate in guarantee schemes that cover a certain amount of the trader’s investment if the broker becomes insolvent. These guarantees amount to up to 20 000 EUR in the EU and 85 000 GBP in the UK. However, the likelihood of such a bankruptcy is low because regulators also have significant net capital requirements that companies must maintain – EUR 730 000 in UK and Cyprus, AUD 1000 000 in Australia and at least 20 million USD in the United States.
GLOBALPAIRS TRADING SOFTWARE
GlobalPairs uses a rather crude web trading platform, which cannot be compared with the capabilities of the software used by most licensed brokers.
While the platform has the basic features for placing orders, customizing charts and application of technical indicators, it lacks the more advanced functionality found in the most widely used trading platforms in the industry, MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5). These platforms have established themselves as industry standard because they offer a wide range of features, including a variety of options for customization, multiple account usage, designing and implementing custom scripts for automated trading and backtesting trade strategies.
It should be noted that the presence of some kind of trading software is no guarantee that it is a genuine broker. Financial scammers often use trading platforms to fool their victims that their money is actually being invested. However, this trading is entirely fictitious and the money goes directly into the scammers’ pockets.
GLOBALPAIRS TRADING CONDITIONS
In keeping with the high-tech theme of the website, GlobalPairs offers trading accounts with names such as “Disruptor”, “Innovator”, “Rule Breaker”, “Pioneer” and “Trailblazer”. However, the descriptions of these accounts lack the detailed information about the trading conditions that you will find on the websites of real brokers.
The minimum deposit is 250 USD. You should be aware that for a considerably smaller amount you could open an account with a licensed broker. GlobalPairs promises a spread starting at 1.6 pips for the starter account, which is comparable to industry averages. However, on the trading platform we see a spread of over 4 pips, which is extremely disadvantageous for the trader.
Leverage for different accounts varies between 1:100 and 1:400. Regulated brokers do not offer such levels to retail traders as trading with high leverage carries risks of sudden and excessive losses. A maximum leverage of 1:30 is allowed in the European Union and the United Kingdom and 1:50 in the United States.
GlobalPairs also allegedly offered bonuses, which is also prohibited to regulated brokers. Fraudsters often use supposedly generous bonuses to bind their victims to unfavorable terms. GlobalPairs is no exception, as we will see below.
GLOBALPAIRS DEPOSIT/WITHDRAW METHODS AND FEES
According to the FAQ section, GlobalPairs accepts credit cards, wire transfer and e-wallets as payment methods, while the Terms and Conditions mention Bitcoin transfers. But depositing money into GlobalPairs requires contacting the people behind the website directly, so we were unable to confirm which methods are actually available. Scammers of this type usually use only cryptocurrencies because they do not allow refunds.
The minimum withdrawal amount is 100 USD and the withdrawal fee is 1% but not less than 30 USD. Most legitimate brokers do not charge transaction fees at all.
But it’s unlikely GlobalPairs will let you withdraw the money you made the mistake of giving them. This is guaranteed by a clause in the Terms and Conditions that says that if an account has received a bonus, it can only withdraw the bonus and profits after it has traded 50,000 times the value of the bonus. The separate Bonus Policy specifies that the bonus terms apply to all withdrawals.
Fraudsters often use such prohibitive requirements to block any withdrawals. We have seen these exact conditions with other fake brokers we have reviewed, such as Geinvgp. In addition to this, GlobalPairs charges a substantial inactivity fee of 99 USD per month.
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK
Unfortunately, the internet is full of scammers. In the age of cryptocurrencies, many of them pretend to be brokers and take advantage of people’s desire to get rich easily through financial instruments they don’t really understand.
Fake brokerage sites lure you in with promises to take on all the difficult and confusing aspects of investing for you. If you make contact with such sites, they will first convince you to make a small, “risk-free” investment of a few hundred dollars. Experienced scammers will then begin to persuade you to “invest” more and more money, and will even deceive you into believing that your initial investment is generating incredible profits.
But you will never see those profits or the money you deposited. These scammers hide behind fake names and offshore shell companies that are not subject to oversight and regulations like regulated brokers. They use cryptocurrencies or other shady payment methods that make refunding money difficult or often impossible. The terms and conditions of these sites are riddled with pitfalls that block withdrawals with impossible-to-fulfill conditions for minimum traded volume and extremely high fees reaching 10, 20 or more percent of the amount.
WHAT TO DO WHEN SCAMMED
If you find yourself in such a situation, you should be very careful not to fall into the clutches of other fraudsters while trying to recover your money. Offers from people on the internet who promise to get you your money back from scammers for an upfront fee are also one hundred percent scammers.
If you used a credit or debit card for the transactions to the scammers, there is some chance you can get your money back by requesting a chargeback. Visa and MasterCard allow this to be done within 540 days. But such a claim can be challenged if you have provided the scammers with documents such as a copy of your ID and proof of address.
