Fxsway user reviews disclose a striking inconsistency: Trustpilot’s 2024 ratings show that its overall rating is 3.8 out of 5 stars, but 29% of the complaints that are negative also mention withdrawals, and the single biggest complaint was for $87,000. In November 2023, a $52,000 withdrawal from an Indian client took 37 days to complete due to a “compliance review,” despite the FCA-regulated firm IG Group taking only 2 hours and 15 minutes to process such withdrawals as per normal. On the execution side of the trade, the clients observed that there was an 82% chance that the EUR/USD spread would widen to 4.1 points during non-farm payroll release (LMAX Digital, the crème de la crème of high-grade industry platforms at the same time, was only 1.8 points), and secret fees (overnight interest premium and currency conversion fee) accounted for 34% of transaction cost. It is 19 percentage points higher than Swissquote.
Regulatory risks come into context: Whereas Fxsway claimed to have a Seychelles FSA license (regulatory number SD112), in 2024 the UK FCA cautioned it to operate in the UK without authorization, on account of illegal solicitation of 63 investors (total deposit over 2.4 million pounds). Compared to CySEC regulated XM Group, its customer funds are held in segregation accounts at Barclays Bank and are protected by as much as 20,000 euros of investment compensation. The 2023 ASIC market Monitoring Report shows that Fxsway only conducts customer fund audits once every 12 months (the EU MiFID II requires quarterly), and has not disclosed the list of the liquidity providers (LPS), leaving 12% of users uncertain if the quote sources are equitable.
Technical infrastructure issues are emphasized: Independent 2024 stress tests reported that Fxsway’s MT5 server had a peak quote delay of 580ms (industry standard < 100ms) when average trading volume was traded at 8,000 orders per second, increasing the risk of gold (XAU/USD) orders slippage by more than $2.5 per ounce to 41%. A Canadian institutional client executed 200 GBP/JPY limit orders per second via API in September 2023. Due to system timeouts, 23% of the orders were not filled, with a potential loss of $48,000. Its mobile App gets a paltry 2.9 stars (out of 5 stars) on the App Store, mainly due to the fact that the crash rate for the iOS version is 18% (industry average is 5%), and the refresh rate for the real-time chart is a mere once every second (the cTrader platform refreshes at 10 times per second).
The account type and charging model have been contentious: Fxsway’s ECN account promotes a $3 commission per lot, yet customer tests have determined that when the trading volume is below 100 standard lots per month, there is a $30 monthly account maintenance charge, which equates to an additional $420 on average yearly cost for micro and small traders. While the VIP account (minimum $100,000 deposit) guaranteed an “exclusive liquidity channel”, its liquidity test in 2024 revealed that the maximum depth of its gold book was just 300 lots (or 300,000 ounces), a 94% drop compared to LMAX Digital’s 5,000-lot depth, and this led to a 3.8 times higher market shock cost for large orders.
The effectiveness of risk control and educational resources is questionable: In the 2023 backtest of Fxsway’s AI trading signal system, the 6-month winning ratio was only 53.2% (margin of error ±6.1%), and the training data time span for the algorithm was not disclosed. An Australian user traded Nasdaq index futures through its “Risk Management System”. Due to a 1.7-second lag in the stop-loss trigger, the margin call loss was 38% of the capital. Despite the fact that the platform conducts three webinars per week (on average, 800 people attend), the level of customer satisfaction with high-level trading strategy material is only 61% (industry norm: 85%), and the cycle of demo account virtual fund resets is up to 24 hours (instant resets are available at Pepperstone).
Legal disputes exacerbate the crisis of confidence: LexisNexis database shows that fxsway has experienced 9 global arbitration cases (2020-2024), with an average settlement amount of 17% of the alleged principal, far below the industry norm of 65% for FINRA’s average arbitration award percentage. The French AMF penalized it 1.2 million euros in March 2024 for manipulating client order history when trading illegally in the European Union. In contrast, Saxo Bank, regulated by multiple regulations, had a 98% rate of closing a 5-day case for customer dispute resolution in the Financial Times broker Ratings of 2024, and its transparency report is published monthly.