Scammer Hiding in Plain Sight
Khwezi Trade is an offshore broker based in South Africa. Their address is 1020 Manhattan Place, 130 Bree Street Cape Town, 8001. They are among the most prominent forex brokers in SA but that doesn’t mean they are trustworthy.
In my Khwezi Trade review, I’ve outlined all the reasons why you should stay away from this shady broker. I’ve exposed their shady tactics and their greedy conditions which allow them to steal from their customers without facing any consequences.
Regulation and Ownership of Khwezi Trade
Khwezi Trade is an offshore broker based in Cape Town, South Africa. It allows you to trade in Rand and has category 2 regulation from the FSCA (the Financial Sector Conduct Authority), which is the primary authority in South Africa that oversees markets and securities.
The FSCA is a reputed organization and its license makes Khwezi Trade seem like a good broker. However, I can’t say that the FSCA is as stringent and effective as the premier regulatorities of the US or UK. It is still a little behind in terms of imposing its regulations when you compare it with CySEC or similar authorities.
Khwezi Trade’s ownership is unreliable too. They claim that their founders have 30 years of experience in the finance industry but that’s a half-truth. One of the founders used to work at JSE as a dealer since 1987 and then worked as a sales professional for multiple companies before founding Khwezi Trade. This means the broker is running a deliberate ‘Khwezi Trade scam’ by lying about its owners. They claim their founder has decades of experiences of the finance industry while in reality, the experience is unrelated to financial management.
Such a blatant lie shows that Khwezi Trade is unreliable and dishonest. What other reason would they have to lie to their customers apart from deception?
Trading Conditions of Khwezi Trade
Let’s now take a look at the trading conditions of Khwezi Trade:
Account Types:
Khwezi Trade offers four account types and a demo account. I always appreciate the presence of a demo account, however their particular demo account feels rigged. Their demo account gives unrealistically positive results which are impossible to achieve in the real world. I believe they have kept the demo account rigged so they can lure people into opening a live trading account with them.
All of their trading accounts deal in Rand and have the stop out percentage fixed at 30%. The following are the trading accounts available at Khwezi Trade:
Basic Trading Account:
To open the Basic Trading Account with Khwezi Trade, you’ll need to invest a minimum of R 2,000. The benefits of this account are quite limited and you only get to perform Scalping and Hedging, which is available for all other accounts too.
Apart from that, there isn’t much in this account. You get access to a few tutorial videos but there’s no way to figure out if they were made by an expert.
Standard Trading Account:
The Standard Trading Account requires you to invest R 15,000 minimum, which is substantially high in comparison to the Basic Trading Account. They have increased the minimum deposit by nearly 7 times but haven’t provided benefits in such proportion. They offer two advantages to the traders in these accounts. First, the trader’s spreads get competitive (they never specify the exact spread), and second, they provide personal training to the trader.
Now, if a trader is investing R 15,000, he certainly isn’t a newbie. So the provision of personal training seems quite wasteful. As they haven’t specified what the actual spreads are, I can’t say whether their changing normal spreads into competitive for this account is an advantage or a disadvantage.
Premier Trading Account:
The Premier account of Khwezi Trade requires the initial investment of R 30,000, which is double the requirement of their previous account. Here, the variable spreads get tight, but they are still unspecified so I can’t establish their utility.
To justify the phenomenal increase in their minimum deposit requirements they provide you with some additional study material such as Tutorial Videos and Advanced Tutorial Videos. If you’re interested in availing of any Khwezi Trade bonus, then you’d have to register for this account because only this and the VIP account are eligible for their monthly promotional entries.
Offering generic study material as the main highlight of such an expensive shows how greedy this broker is. The returns of investing R 30,000 are too low in this account.
VIP Trading Account:
The final and the most expensive trading account available at Khwezi Trade is their VIP account. You’ll have to invest a minimum of R 50,000 to get this account. It gets all the features such as ‘Advanced Personal Training’ and ‘Market Analysis Portal’.
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The spreads on this account are institutional and like the rest of the accounts, it is unspecified. The only advantage of having this account is you’ll get additional study material, which I think is the worst benefit a broker can offer to any trader. When you’re investing R 50,000 in any account, I don’t think you’d need to study what forex trading is. They are just trying to dupe traders by giving useless justifications for their highly expensive trading accounts.
Offered Leverage
Khwezi Trade offers maximum leverage of 1:200 on all of its trading accounts. While this might seem like a genuine ratio, you should know that in properly regulated areas, such as the US and the UK, there are limits on leverage forex brokers can offer to traders.
For example, in the US, forex brokers can only offer a maximum of 1:50 to its traders. There can only be certain cases where they are allowed to offer more. Regulatory authorities impose such restrictions on leverage ratios because higher leverage puts a trader at higher risk.
Fees and Commission
Khwezi Trade doesn’t specify the fees and commission it charges on its traders. This is a major red flag because it means you’d have no idea what kind of charges you’d have to pay when you start availing of their services.
Even in their terms and conditions, they have attributed their fee to a certain ‘Fee Schedule’. They don’t specify the kind of charges they would levy from their users but only elaborate on their rights of charging them. You can see that in the screenshot below:
The above details are the only mention of their fees and commission in their terms and conditions. On their website, they don’t mention anything about their charges.
Such a provision exposes traders to the risk of hidden fees, a potent weapon of shady brokers. Hidden fees allow brokers to charge whatever they want and enable them to steal the funds of their traders.
In the cases of hidden fees, traders are left helpless because they can’t take any legal action against the broker. After all, the trader agrees to the broker’s T&C’s when he signs up. You should stay miles away from any broker who can charge hidden fees. Always read the fine print to find out if the broker can charge hidden fees or not.
Trading Platform of Khwezi Trade
Khwezi Trade uses the popular MetaTrader 4 as its trading platform. MetaTrader 4 (also known as MT4) offers many advantages to its users such as automated trading sessions, and multiple indicators, which make it an excellent choice for any trader.
MetaTrader 4 is a product of MetaQuotes Software and it entered the market in 2005. Its server stability and its plethora of features have made it the most popular trading platform among forex traders.
So far, it’s the only advantage I’ve seen in Khwezi Trade. However, some shady brokers tend to use a popular trading platform so they can appear trustworthy to new traders. In my Khwezi Trade review, I believe the same is happening here.
Available Payment Methods
Khwezi Trade offers only bank wire transfers, credit cards, and debit cards as its payment methods. They have kept this information ambiguous too as you can see in the screenshot below:
Withdrawing funds from your Khwezi Trade account is a very tedious process. You’d have to send them an email and request a withdrawal, only then will you be able to get your funds back to your account. Here is their explanation:
They have kept the withdrawal process so painful because they don’t want you to get your money back.
Some people are complaining about it too. Here’s a customer’s complaint:
Khwezi Trade Review: Conclusion
We have now reached the end of my Khwezi Trade review. To summarize, I would suggest you stay away from this shady Forex broker. Khwezi Trade doesn’t provide any necessary information on its trading conditions except its account types. It has kept nearly everything ambiguous so it can charge hidden fees and steal the funds of its customers.
The ‘request-to-withdraw’ method for withdrawing funds is also a shady tactic. They have made the withdrawal process so slow and painful that it’s nearly impossible to get your money back from them.
It’s obvious, Khwezi Trade is a terrible forex broker and you should stay away from them.
Any1Profit
One of my friends sent me this review when we were arguing whether Forex is good or not.
I had no idea Khwezi Trade was a scam. These people should be ashamed of themselves. When I googled them, I didn’t find this review very easily. I believe they have been burying such reviews to promote their shady services. Pathetic.
Thank you people who shared their experiences here. Otherwise, I would have lost a lot of money because of Khwezi Trade too.
Khwezi deducted XXX from my account as ‘maintenance charges’. My account’s balance is 0 now. I have tried to contact the customer support but I didn’t get any responses. Khwezi Trade is a scam people, don’t trust them.
They’ve been doing the same to me, they tripple charged me on the so caloed swap, and when i enquired about it they said on Wednesday thats what they normally do. They are a terrible broker that is just milking our funds
Khwezi Trade charged my account without specifying why they were charging. Now I don’t have enough funds to trade there. I tried to contact the customer support to find out why they charged me but they don’t reply. It is a nightmare to work with this scam broker. Please people don’t trade with Khwezi Trade.
Khwezi Trade is a scam. Stay away!