Beware! Wise Tradefx 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.
Wise Tradefx wants us to believe that it is a regulated, reputable and award-winning forex broker operating in one of the leading global financial hubs. But this website is actually a good reminder that we should always check the claims we read online – especially if our money is on the line.
Let us examine the evidence that Wise Tradefx is not at all the legitimate financial services provider it claims to be.
WISE TRADEFX REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
The first thing to look for in a forex broker’s website is which legal entity runs it, where it is based and what regulatory oversight it is subject to. Licensed companies are also required to provide a comprehensive set of legal documentation.
Neither on the website nor in the Wise Tradefx Terms and Conditions can a company name be found. That in itself is a big red flag that we are dealing with a scam.
According to its website homepage, Wise Tradefx has offices in the City of London and Wall Street in New York.
The lack of specific details about the owning company makes these claims an obvious lie. As might be expected, no authorised broker using this brand and domain can be found on the records of financial regulators in either country.
In the text of the Terms and Conditions, we see a statement that the unnamed company behind the Wise Tradefx is regulated and authorised by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) of Seychelles.
Registration in this offshore zone would not give a broker the legal right to offer its services in the UK and the US. But the situation is even worse. A check of the FSA database reveals not a licence but a warning that Wise Tradefx is not even authorised in this offshore zone.
Obviously we can’t trust anything on the Wise Tradefx website. If you have decided to invest in financial instruments, and especially if you are a novice trader, you should use the services of a licensed broker which is genuinely based in a jurisdiction with strong regulations.
Depending on your location, it is advisable to choose a company that is regulated by an institution such as Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in US, Australian Securities and Exchanges Commission (ASIC), UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or some EU regulator like Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC).
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.
WISE TRADEFX TRADING SOFTWARE
Wise Tradefx uses a little known trading platform called Xone Trader. We have seen this software being used by numerous fake brokers. Although the Wise Tradefx website has a link to web, desktop and mobile versions of the platform, the login credentials provided after account registration are not accepted by the software. Therefore, at the time of writing this review, Wise Tradefx does not actually have functioning trading software.
It should be noted that the presence of some kind of trading software is no guarantee that this 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.
Legitimate brokers offer clients a wide selection of trading software, including desktop, mobile apps and web-based platforms. The most widely used platforms in the industry are 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.
WISE TRADEFX TRADING CONDITIONS
When you visit the website of a legitimate broker you will find proposals for different types of trading accounts suitable for investors with different preferences, as well as detailed descriptions of trading parameters – minimum deposit, order execution method, tradable financial instruments, leverage, spread, swap, commissions, etc.
Instead of something like this, on the Wise Tradefx website we find a list of “trading packages” whose descriptions only give specific information about the minimum deposit of 100 USD. For the same or often a much lower amount you could start trading through a duly licensed broker, including some of the industry’s leading brands.
In the Wise Tradefx dashboard you can choose a leverage between 1:100 and 1:500. This is further evidence that this could not be a legitimate broker operating in the UK and US.
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.
WISE TRADEFX DEPOSIT/WITHDRAW METHODS AND FEES
In the deposit menu we see two options – credit cards and cryptocurrencies. But if the conventional payment method is selected, we get an error message “page not found”. Deposit is therefore only possible via cryptocurrencies.
Scammers prefer cryptocurrencies because these transactions are not subject to refunds. While there are some legitimate brokers that accept digital currencies like Bitcoin, they do so alongside other transparent payment methods such as credit/debit card, bank transfer or popular e-wallets like GiroPa, PayPal, Neteller or Sofort.
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK
Many people have a desire to invest in the financial markets but lack the necessary knowledge and experience. This makes them a potential victim of the many internet scammers posing as brokers and investment intermediaries. These types of scams have exploded alongside the cryptocurrency boom.
If you trust such a website and give them your personal information, you will be contacted by experienced scammers who will entice you with promises of easy profits. The scammers usually offer to take over all aspects of investing for you, sometimes even prompting you to install remote access software on your personal computer. After investing an initial low amount, they will convince you that you are already making incredible profits and urge you to invest more.
But you will never get the promised profits, nor will you be able to get your money back. If you want to withdraw funds from your account, you will find that you have suddenly lost everything in the market, or that you have to meet impossibly high traded volume requirements, or that you have to pay huge fees. It is also possible that fraudsters simply disappear because they hide behind fake names and shell companies in offshore areas that are not subject to any control and regulation.
WHAT TO DO WHEN SCAMMED
One of the few options to get at least some of your money back in such a situation is to ask for a chargeback. But this is only possible if you have used a credit or debit card for the transaction. Scammers typically use cryptocurrencies or dubious e-wallets that make it impossible to get your money back.
Under no circumstances should you trust people and websites that promise to magically refund your lost money for an upfront fee. This is also a well established scam. You may even fall victim to the same scammers again.
