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Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
EcoMarkets is an unregulated broker who claims to be based in the Netherlands but in fact doesn’t have a legit forex license and therefore offers financial services outside the law. If you consider investing there, bear in mind that this broker doesn’t give any useful information about its trading conditions and deposit options, thus leaving you no other choice but to register in order to find out. This is not a good practice, as most reputable brokers would display such important data right away.
As a whole, we don’t recommend trading with EcoMarkets for your own good. If you are still not convinced enough, keep reading the following lines for more details on why we think ecmts.io is a scam website.
Regulation and safety of funds
To start with, EcoMarkets doesn’t specify which company runs it, so we don’t really know who stays behind this broker. It’s needless to say that you shouldn’t trust an anonymous website in the first place. What’s more there’s no legal documentation or license number, in fact EcoMarkets conveniently skips the topic and doesn’t mention if the company is regulated.
Furthermore, the broker claims to have a registered office in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Generally, if a forex broker wants to operate on the market legally, it must be authorized by the local watchdog – the Dutch regulatory agency AFM (Autoriteit Financielle Markten). We searched the registers of AFM but EcoMarkets wasn’t on the list.
So, it’s obvious that this broker is totally unlawful – just stay away from it by all means!
In addition, EcoMarkets points out three different phone numbers – one international and two that are based in the UK and Australia respectively. We checked over this broker in the registers of the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, as well as the Australian ASIC just to confirm that EcoMarkets isn’t authorized to offer its services there either.
Investing with such unregulated brokers can really drag you down in a second as these firms don’t play by the rules and are capable of stealing every cent you deposit. Instead, make sure to choose a reputable broker with a legit forex license. This way you can be confident that your investment is in safe hands, as regulated brokers are supervised by certain financial authorities and must meet some very tough requirements. They are also obligated to send regular reports to the relevant watchdog with data about their trading volumes and the transactions performed by their clients.
If that’s not enough, note that legitimate brokers must have a certain amount of minimum capital that guarantees the firm is financially stable. In the Netherlands the minimum capital requirement is 730 000 EUR and the same applies more or less for most of the countries from the EU, as well as for the UK.
Not only that, but regulated brokers in the Netherlands must take part in compensation schemes that guarantee your funds in the unlikely case of broker’s insolvency. Then a relevant authority can compensate you with up to 20 000 EUR – the same sum is valid for most of the countries in the EU. For reference, the amount in the UK is up to 85 000 GBP.
Lastly, licensed brokers are obligated to keep their customers’ funds in segregated accounts apart from their own capital. This is one way to protect your money and prevent any kind of fraud.
Trading software
EcoMarkets seems to offer its own trading software. Despite its aims to be “fully integrated, accessible and user-friendly”, this platform is nothing more than a simple web-based software with no impressive features. See for yourself:
As you see, there are only custom indicators and tools. But what’s more interesting here is that it seems you can’t trade forex pairs, but only cryptocurrencies, stocks and commodities.
What’s more, if you want to learn more about the platform before you open an account, then don’t bother looking for any helpful information, as the “about our platform” link is broken. Apparently you have to register in order to see what type of software this broker really offers – something that reputable brokers would never do. Usually you can use the webterminal of MetaTrader in order to see a demo version of what the broker offers.
Not only that, but this web-based platform certainly cannot compare to more sophisticated trading software like MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5.
Trading conditions
Apparently EcoMarkets only poses as a legitimate broker, but in fact the whole website is a sham. This broker clearly hides what its trading conditions are, as the site is full of unnecessary data and unrealistic claims, but lacks what’s most important for every trader – data about the leverage, spread and minimum deposit.
As we already said, EcoMarkets skips mentioning what types of accounts it offers. Furthermore we don’t know what the leverage is, a very essential part for every trading strategy. As a whole, don’t be misled by high leverage and promises for fast and high return on investment – it’s illusive that trading with leverage as high as 1:500 for example can be successful. Note that the higher the leverage is, the greater the risk is. For this reason there is a leverage cap of 1:30 for the EU and the UK, as well as 1:50 for the US.
But if you want to try and trade with higher leverage, there are a lot of offshore subsidiaries of reputable forex brokers that can help you do that in a secure and transparent way.
As for the minimum deposit, there is no information as well. Only when we made an attempt to fund our account, were we told that the minimum deposit requirement is 250 USD. A pretty standard amount to be honest, that most reputable brokers ask for anyway. It is certainly not worth the risk of investing with such shady brokers like EcoMarkets.
Moreover, this broker also doesn’t specify what spread you can benefit from. After opening an account with them, there was a spread of 67 USD for BTC USDT. This seems way too much without a doubt. Just to know, always look for a spread lower than 2 pips when you trade with currency pairs for example, as it comes with lower trading costs. On the contrary – every spread higher than 2 pips is certainly going to be more costly.
You can choose some of the legitimate brokers who offer tight spreads for real here.
Deposit/Withdrawal methods and fees
It’s no surprise that EcoMarkets tries to mislead its customers once again when it comes to its payment methods. On the homepage of this bogus website you can spot some logos of popular payment options like Visa/Mastercard, Yandex, WebMoney, Swiss Exchange and some more. Needless to say, most of them are not really offered by EcoMarkets. In fact, what you can use are Visa/Mastercard and some cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin and Ethereum to be precise.
As you see this broker just tries to manipulate people into believing it’s credible and trustworthy – something you shouldn’t count on as EcoMarkets is absolutely unlicensed.
Bear in mind that most scammers want you to pay with crypto coins such as Bitcoin or Ethereum for a reason that is simple enough. First of all, these transactions are proven to be 100% irreversible so once you make a payment your money is gone for good. Secondly, you don’t know to whom the wallet actually belongs, a fact that makes crypto payments practically anonymous. Because of this, crypto transactions happen to be the beloved payment method of fraudsters, but unfortunately are not in your favor. For sure, this shouldn’t be your first pick when you choose a payment option.
On the other hand, genuine brokers usually offer a wide variety of payment alternatives for real. For example you can choose a traditional option like credit/debit card or bank transfer. Paying with Visa/Mastercard allows you to file for a chargeback in 540 days in case you want to restore your funds. Another popular payment methods are the e-wallets such as Skrill, Neteller or PayPal with which you can file a complaint as well.