XTB is a scam online trading platform which claims to offer the best financial trading experience to clients. But unfortunately, the broker fails to provide advanced services, and most importantly, the firm is not safe to trade as it holds limited licenses that can’t assure its authenticity. The broker website has an intricate design, and beginners might face grave difficulty understanding all the features and services. There is no research section with the broker, and the education content is of low quality. The trading platform offered by the broker comes with a low level of features and services.
XTB Scam or Safe?
The broker is a clear scam as it does not provide any clear information about its services. The broker is also not a part of MiFID or the EU. ICH marks sure that no trader at all should be exposed to a scam broker. The organisation also offers 20,000 Euros in compensation if the situation actually happens.
Overall, we, as a team of researchers, nowhere guarantee that the broker XTB is safe. According to us, it is an apparent scam. We suggest to our traders that they do their research well before getting involved with XTB.
Account Types:
The broker offers only two trading accounts out of which, one is a religion-specific account. One of the accounts has very high commissions, and the broker says that it cannot share any information about the commissions on cryptocurrencies in one of the accounts. Such practices where the broker hides the trader’s information are clear scam practices, and the broker should not be entertained any further. These accounts also do not provide any trading specific services that are provided by below-average brokers too. None of the accounts can fulfil what a trader needs and the accounts have very little to offer.
Trading Platform:
The broker completely forgets the existence of trading platform goliath MetaTrader. None of the versions of the platforms is provided by the broker. Instead, it offers a local platform about which, the broker provides no information. We guess that these are based on a lower programming language that is easier to outsource in cheap labour but cannot handle the market when volumes begin to pile up.
The platform’s UI/UX design is complicated and difficult to understand, and newcomers might find it hard to operate. These platforms fail to offer the correct timeframes, indicators, charts etc.
Markets and Products:
The broker fails to offer a diverse range of products and at the same time claims that there are more than 1500 tradable instruments through it. XTB nowhere provides information for the same. There is no clear picture of the same. The broker also claims that there are CFD tradable products on the website. The broker again does not specify which or what product can be traded by CFD. The leverage on XTB, as claimed, is 1:500. But this leverage again is variable. Meaning, it can be changed by the booker as soon as the market moves away from the broker’s cutch. The broker makes sure that the trader cannot make the money he is supposed to. Scam brokers often conduct such practices, and the broker XTB should not be entertained any further.
Account Opening:
The whole process is challenging for a novice trader and confusing for first-time visitors as it fails to specify the intent for taking information clearly. The broker does not explain the process anywhere on the website. The clients need to provide all their details in terms of financials and personal details without understanding the further process of verification.
The processing time for activating accounts consumes a lot of time than other top trading brokers, plus, the user needs to wait for more than two weeks for the same. It can discourage professional traders from getting involved with the broker financially and at the same time, wastes newcomers’ time which would have been used for practice and learning.
Commissions and Fee:
The broker charges exponentially high Commission, variable spreads that move at the broker’s will. It looks like the broker has several hidden charges that are not mentioned clearly on the site. We discovered some of the hidden charges were the penalty for inactivity, charges for withdrawing the deposits, swap fee for holding the orders overnight, and other additional costs, none of which were clearly mentioned on the broker’s website.
Deposit and Withdrawal:
The scam firm’s payment offers are limited, and none of them is widely recognised or even recognised by a bank. At the same time, the broker also has several hidden charges and fee for withdrawals. Note that the processing is longer, with deposits taking over three days and withdrawals taking up to seven days. The delay in payments can be tumultuous for traders, and the process is unclear and challenging to an unprecedented level. There are numerous limitations for withdrawals on the amount, number of transactions, and many more.
Research:
The broker differentiates its users as soon as they visit the website. And the broker wants the user itself to specify the level. This is nonsense. A novice trader cannot specify as to what level of trading experience he or she has. The broker offers limited research material for analysis. That can be a significant setback as the research content is useful for analysing the market and making better trading decisions. The tools which the broker skips can enhance the skill-based knowledge of the client, and since they are absent, the free demo account for testing site service is of no use whatsoever,
Education:
The broker’s educational material is of degraded quality and can be accessed from anywhere on the internet. An ideal broker should offer a diversified range of valuable educational content that helps the newcomer learn the market dynamics.
Customer Service:
The broker’s customer service is a pathetic excuse for the same, and the executives fail to clear straight enough queries. The firm boasts 24/7 customer service everywhere, but no calls were answered, and the email response took extended time than usual. The standard response time was longer than multiple days which gets frustrating for an average trader.
By the time we could get connected, the trade we were concerned about was long gone.
Conclusion:
Overall, the XTB is a clear scam and not safe at all to trade and has limited or no licenses that nowhere assure the so-called authenticity. The trading tools and services offered by the broker are not even close to the mark. Valuable customers can get so much better options with T1Markets, ETFinance, PrimeFin, and Brokereo, which makes sure to provide a wide range of trading instruments through chief account types and trading platforms. The charges are quite low. Most importantly, all these brokers are the safest ventures for traders and investors to trade as the leading financial institutions regulate them.
