FXPesa Review Kenya 2026

EGM Securities Limited holds CMA Licence Number 107 as a non-dealing online foreign exchange broker, and trades as FXPesa. We confirmed it on the CMA licensee register, where a search of the non-dealing list for "FX Pesa" returns EGM Securities Limited (trading as "FX Pesa") at licence 107, one of 14 non-dealing online foreign exchange brokers. The same company is on the CMA's list of derivatives brokers at licence 120. FXPesa does not appear in the CMA's public caution of 11 September 2026. Its website gives the company number, PVT-AAAAFF7, describes an execution-only service with no investment advice, and says it is not directed at residents of the United States, Belgium, Canada or Singapore. FXPesa's FAQ says EGM Securities is a subsidiary of the Equiti Group, and the FXPesa app is listed in the app stores as Equiti Trader.

The company that onboards Kenyan clients is the licensed company itself. The Client Terms and Conditions (version 2.0, May 2024) are with EGM Securities Limited under licence 107. They describe an execution-only service in which it transmits your orders or deals as your agent, including as a matched principal (clause 15); its Order Execution Policy (May 2024) passes orders straight through to a pool of liquidity providers such as banks, and its Conflicts of Interest Policy (May 2024) says it always trades as a matched principal, passing all client orders to selected counterparties, so that it "does not take any risk on your positions". The Terms are governed by the laws of Kenya, with the courts of Kenya having jurisdiction (clauses 87 and 88). FXPesa's Regulation and Client Protections statement says that all client money, whatever the client's classification, is held in segregated bank accounts that do not form part of the firm's assets, under the CMA's Foreign Exchange Trading Regulations of 2017. The Client Terms add that those client bank accounts may be pooled with other clients' money (46.3), that EGM Securities Limited keeps any interest they earn (46.4), and that it accepts no liability if a bank holding them fails (46.3). Segregation is not compensation, and the CMA's Investor Compensation Fund does not cover online forex brokers: section 18 of the Capital Markets Act sets it up for the failure of a licensed stockbroker or dealer.

Negative balance protection is where the documents are unclear. FXPesa's FAQ says "we offer negative balance protection so you can only lose what you deposited in most cases", and in the same answer that a fast market "could cause you to lose the whole deposit or even more". The Client Terms do not set the protection out. They say that where a negative balance on your account exceeds what EGM Securities Limited holds for you, "you must pay such excess to us whether demanded or not" (clause 80.1), and the Risk Warning Disclosure (May 2024) says you can lose more than your initial deposit and will be responsible for any resulting deficit. The same Terms also say that "to the extent there is any conflict between these Terms and the Act or Applicable Regulations, the latter will prevail" (clause 7.1(a)), and the CMA's Circular No. 03/2023 has since 2023 required licensed online forex brokers to "provide its clients with negative balance protection, which limits the client's aggregate liability for all CFDs connected to a CFD trading account to the funds in that CFD trading account" (para. 7). Clause 7.1(a) may therefore bring the CMA's protection in ahead of clause 80.1, but FXPesa's documents do not say how the two fit together, and the FAQ offers the protection "in most cases". Ask FXPesa how it applies before relying on it.

Complaints go first to support@fxpesa.com. The Complaints Handling Policy (May 2024) aims to resolve them within seven business days, after which you can refer the complaint to the compliance department at compliance@egmsecurities.com; it should be dealt with within three months of receipt, and any redress FXPesa agrees is paid within one month of its final response. After that, it says, you may in some instances escalate to the CMA. FXPesa's Product Sensitisation Framework gives a shorter timeframe, a final response within eight weeks, and says a complaint can be taken to the CMA only within six months of that response.

On account security, we found no two-factor protection. Our withdrawal was confirmed with the client portal password alone, and the FXPesa app's security settings offer biometric login, a login passcode and an off-screen lock, but no one-time code. We did not check the web portal's settings.

See our guide to the Capital Markets Authority.

Safety signals

Opening was fully online, in three steps. Contact details came first: your title and name exactly as on your passport or ID, email, mobile number and town. Then personal information: date of birth, nationality, residential address and whether you are a US tax citizen or a tax resident elsewhere. The third step is short, three questions: whether your first deposit will be more than USD 500, whether your annual employment income is more than USD 5,000, and whether you have traded CFDs or FX before. The same step offered only MetaTrader 5 and a Standard account, and set one password for the client portal that also becomes the MetaTrader password unless you change it. A final screen asks you to accept the Risk Notice Disclosure, the Clients Agreement, the Order Execution Policy and the Privacy Policy, and to confirm your address. We submitted at 20:37 on Saturday 24 October 2026.

Identity verification is handled by Jumio. FXPesa asks for the photo page of a passport or both sides of a National ID, and says Huduma cards are not accepted. Jumio asks for consent to process your data, which may include biometric data, and lets you continue on a phone, use the computer's camera or upload a file. You can skip to the client area, but it has no deposit menu until the application is accepted. FXPesa's message said verification "usually takes a few minutes"; ours was accepted at 09:42 on Monday 26 October, about 37 hours later, across a weekend.

There are two live account types, each in US dollars or shillings, on MetaTrader 4 or 5 with leverage up to 1:400: Standard, with no minimum deposit, average spreads of 1.4 pips and no commission, and Premier, from USD 100, with spreads from 0.0 pips and a commission of USD 3.50 per lot per side. Swap-free accounts are available on request. We traded on an MT5 Standard account in US dollars and changed its leverage from 1:400 to 1:300 in the client area, which took effect at once. Further accounts can be opened in the FXPesa app: on 27 October we created a Premier account in US dollars there, which appeared straight away beside a demo tab and a wallet, at leverage 1:400.

1. 1
   Contact details

   Your name exactly as on your passport or ID, email, mobile number and town.

2. 2
   Personal information

   Date of birth, nationality, residential address and a US tax question.

3. 3
   Trading experience

   Whether your first deposit will exceed USD 500, whether your income exceeds USD 5,000 and whether you have traded CFDs or FX; then MetaTrader 5, a Standard account and a password.

4. 4
   Declarations

   Accept the Risk Notice Disclosure, Clients Agreement, Order Execution Policy and Privacy Policy, and confirm your address.

5. 5
   Verify your identity

   A passport or National ID, not a Huduma card, through Jumio; deposits and trading open once the application is accepted.

The client area lists cards, M-Pesa Express, mobile money and bank transfer for deposits, and FXPesa's FAQ and withdrawal menu add Skrill and Neteller. Payments must come from a number or card in your own name, and a new card or number can take up to 24 hours to be applied; FXPesa's March 2023 Payment Terms add that it does not accept cash. FXPesa says it charges no deposit fee, though the Client Terms allow it to levy a reasonable administration charge on payments (51.6).

We deposited by M-Pesa on 26 October 2026. The mobile money form works in shillings and refused cents: KSh 1,303 came to USD 9.99 at 1 KES to 0.00767 USD, about 130.4 KES per USD. The payment went through iPay, a payment gateway whose checkout offered M-Pesa Express, M-Pesa, Bonga Points and Airtel Money. The M-Pesa prompt on our phone asked us to pay KSh 1,303 to iPay rather than to FXPesa; iPay's receipt at 23:18:17 named FXPesa as the payee, and FXPesa's email crediting USD 9.99 arrived the same minute. A second KSh 1,300 at 23:32 went into a client-area wallet and was moved to the trading account at 23:40, for USD 19.96 in all. Neither showed a fee.

FXPesa offers a 100 percent bonus on a first deposit, but only from USD 10. The form warned us that USD 9.99 was short, and no bonus was credited. Under the Welcome Bonus Terms (3 September 2025) the bonus, capped at USD 5,000, is extra margin only: it cannot be withdrawn or used to cover losses, it is removed if you withdraw any money, and while it is on the account you are stopped out only when your own funds fall to 5 percent of the margin (clauses 3 to 4.6).

Withdrawals go back to the method you paid in with, cards first. FXPesa's FAQ says requests made before 15:00 East Africa Time on a business day may be processed that day, and later ones on a best endeavours basis. We asked for USD 19.57 by M-Pesa just after midnight on Tuesday 27 October, quoted as KSh 2,531 at 1 KES to 0.00773 USD, about 129.4 KES per USD, with no fee shown. The form's only check was our portal password; there was no one-time code. FXPesa's email acknowledging the request came at 00:32 and said that once approved, mobile money arrives within 3 working hours and domestic bank transfers within 3 to 15 working days. Ours was much quicker: at 00:57 M-Pesa confirmed KSh 2,531.00 received from FXPesa, 25 minutes later and in the middle of the night, with nothing deducted. The deposit had been paid to iPay, but the withdrawal came from FXPesa itself.

Because our account was in US dollars, both legs were converted: about 130.4 KES per USD in and 129.4 out, roughly 0.8 percent across the round trip. The Client Terms allow costs on conversions (54.2), and FXPesa's March 2023 Payment Terms describe a currency conversion fee of a fixed percentage of each deposit or withdrawal. FXPesa also offers shilling accounts, which we have not tested, so we cannot say whether one avoids that cost.

Funding methods

FXPesa offers CFDs on forex, shares, indices, commodities and ETFs. Its products page lists 60 currency pairs, shares from the EU, the UK and the US, and commodities including precious metals, oil and crops, and its FAQ describes the range as CFD spot and futures contracts. On the MetaTrader 5 web terminal we saw share CFDs such as NVIDIA, Apple, Tesla and Microsoft, oil and gold, and symbol groups for rolling futures, futures, indices, metals and oil. The FXPesa app groups its markets into forex, commodities, ETFs and indices, and its commodities list included carbon, coffee, cotton, gasoil and natural gas contracts. We saw no crypto on the products page or in the FAQ's description of the range. Every instrument is a CFD, so you do not own the underlying, and leverage goes up to 1:400 on major currency pairs (1:80 on EUR/CHF and GBP/CHF). We traded EUR/USD only.

On a Standard account the cost of a trade is the spread, with no commission. FXPesa's spread table, captured on 27 October 2026, gives typical EUR/USD spreads of 1.4 pips on Standard and 0.0 on Premier, where the commission is USD 3.50 per lot per side (USD 7 per lot round turn). Other typical Standard spreads include GBP/USD 2.2, USD/JPY 1.4 and EUR/CHF 2.7 pips.

On the MetaTrader 5 web terminal late on 26 October we saw EUR/USD at 1.11738 and 1.11751, a spread of 1.3 pips. It widened around the daily rollover: 1.9 pips at about midnight and 4.4 pips (1.11726 and 1.11770) shortly after. The rollover falls at midnight platform time, which by FXPesa's FAQ is midnight in Kenya while the US is on summer time and 01:00 in winter, and the FAQ warns that spreads can widen overnight, around news and at market opens and closes.

On the Premier account we created in the FXPesa app, EUR/USD was quoted at 1.11532 and 1.11533 at 15:51 on 27 October, a spread of 0.1 pips. The USD 7 round-turn commission is worth 0.7 pips on a standard EUR/USD lot, so the all-in cost was about 0.8 pips, against 1.3 on Standard the night before. We placed no trade on Premier.

Swaps are charged on positions held over the rollover; our 0.01 lot EUR/USD buy, opened at 23:50, paid USD 0.08. Swap-free accounts are available on request under FXPesa's Swap Free Terms (3 April 2023), which replace swaps on selected instruments with a daily administrative fee after a grace period, tripled on Wednesdays; a swap-free account cannot take the welcome bonus.

There is no minimum deposit on Standard, and we paid no deposit or withdrawal fee on M-Pesa, though the Client Terms allow a reasonable administration charge on payments (clause 51.6). We found no inactivity fee in the Client Terms. Converting between shillings and dollars cost about 0.8 percent over a round trip on our USD account; the Client Terms allow costs on conversions (54.2), the March 2023 Payment Terms describe them as a fixed percentage of the amount, and we have not tested whether a shilling account avoids them. The Client Terms ask you to top up when equity falls below 100 percent of the margin (38.2), and FXPesa's FAQ puts the stop-out at 30 percent.

FXPesa offers MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5, each with a web terminal, plus the FXPesa app and FXPesa Copy for copy trading. We traded on the MetaTrader 5 web terminal: a EUR/USD market order of 0.01 lots with a stop loss and take profit, which opened, carried its swap and closed without problems. The terminal has a searchable symbol tree, an order ticket with stop loss and take profit, and charts with trend, oscillator, volume and Bill Williams indicators. Demo accounts run on MetaTrader 5 or 4, Standard or Premier, with USD 10,000 of simulated money, and expire after 90 days without use. We did not trade on MetaTrader 4, FXPesa Copy or in the FXPesa app, which we tested without a balance (see the mobile section).

We used the FXPesa app on an Android phone from 15:47 to 16:00 on 27 October 2026. Its sign-in screen carried the logo of Equiti, FXPesa's parent group, and the app was branded FXPesa once we were in. It offered biometric login straight away, or a passcode instead, and its security settings add an off-screen lock; there is no two-factor or one-time code option. From the app we opened a new Premier live account in US dollars, which appeared at once under Live, beside Demo and Wallet tabs.

Markets are grouped into forex, commodities, ETFs and indices, each line showing the sell price, the spread and the buy price, and a watchlist takes instruments of your choice. The EUR/USD page loaded a clean candlestick chart, built on TradingView, at one, three, five and fifteen minute intervals, with the day's open, high and low, upcoming economic events, Dow Jones Newswires headlines, the trading hours and a price alert. Its Support page opens FXPesa's FAQ with a chat button. Our balance was zero after the withdrawal, so we did not place a trade in the app, and we did not install the MetaTrader 5 app.

Before the app, we used the MetaTrader 5 web terminal and the client portal in Chrome on the same phone. The portal fitted the small screen, with the account summary, account forms and analysis pages. The web terminal's charts were less reliable: on 27 October they showed a "Failed to load bars" warning for NVIDIA and EUR/USD, which the app's chart did not.

FXPesa is built for Kenya: EGM Securities Limited is a CMA-licensed company in Nairobi, its accounts can be held in shillings, M-Pesa and Airtel Money fund them through iPay, our M-Pesa withdrawal arrived in 25 minutes, and support speaks English and Swahili, with a toll-free Kenyan number and WhatsApp. Swap-free accounts are available on request. The points to weigh are the conversion cost if you choose a US dollar account, about 0.8 percent on our round trip, and how the negative balance protection in FXPesa's FAQ applies under its Client Terms, which the documents do not say.

FXPesa says it offers support 24 hours a day, six days a week, from teams who speak English and Swahili: email at support@fxpesa.com, a toll-free Kenyan number (0800 211 185), an international line (+254 730 676 002) and WhatsApp (+254 719 856 258). We tested the live chat twice. It opens with an AI assistant that warns it may make mistakes. Just after midnight on 27 October 2026, asked what one standard forex lot represents, it said it could not find an answer and offered a live agent; we asked for one, the transfer was requested and the assistant left, and the chat still said "Transferring" in our later captures. On the afternoon of Monday 2 November we tried again from Support in the FXPesa app. The assistant asked for our email before handing over, and at 15:58 a "Support Agent" joined in the same minute as the transfer request. We asked for the cut-off hours for withdrawals at 15:59; the agent said hello at 16:00 and answered at 16:03: "withdrawals are accessible 24/7, we do not have time/period restrictions". That matches our own withdrawal, requested after midnight and paid 25 minutes later, but it did not mention the FAQ's 15:00 cut-off for same-day processing on business days. We did not try the phone lines, WhatsApp or email.

The client portal's analysis pages carry third-party research: Latest Insights, including a morning report supplied by Acuity, Hot News tagged by market, calendar events and a corporate calendar of earnings, dividends, stock splits and IPOs. Each page is marked as third-party analysis, not investment advice. In the FXPesa app, each instrument's page carries Dow Jones Newswires headlines and upcoming economic events. FXPesa also publishes a Product Sensitisation Framework, a plain introduction to forex and CFDs, margin and leverage, and their risks. On fxpesa.com, checked on 3 November 2026, the Learn section has 49 text articles in four groups, Trading 101, Risk Management, Market Analysis and Trading Strategies, with no videos; the newest are dated 20 October 2024. The FXPesa Academy page promises twice-daily webinars and face-to-face sessions at the Nairobi office, but gives no dates, times or language, and its sign-up button leads to FXPesa's YouTube channel. A trading tools page describes a Signal Centre, a Research Terminal and an economic calendar, free for two weeks on a demo account and without limit on a funded one. We found no Swahili material, no glossary beyond a Trading Terminology 101 article, and no calculators. We did not join a webinar or use the tools.