IC Markets Review Kenya 2026

IC Markets (KE) Limited holds CMA Licence Number 199 as a non-dealing online foreign exchange broker. We confirmed it on the CMA licensee register, where a search for IC Markets returns IC Markets (KE) Limited at licence 199, one of 14 non-dealing online foreign exchange brokers. IC Markets does not appear in the CMA's public caution of 11 September 2026. Its Kenyan website names the company, its CMA licence and its registration number, PVT-GYUQ6RJL, and says it does not serve residents of the United States, Brazil, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, Iran or North Korea.

The company that onboards Kenyan clients is the licensed company itself. The Terms and Conditions (May 2024) define "IC Markets" as IC Markets (KE) Limited, say it acts as your agent and not as principal (clause 2.1), and are governed by the laws of Kenya, with the courts of Kenya having jurisdiction (clause 30.10). Your money is combined with other clients' money in client money accounts kept separate from IC Markets' own (clause 14.1), which the deposit page calls segregated client trust accounts; IC Markets keeps any interest earned on them (14.2). The Risk Disclosure Notice says that if you lose more than your balance, IC Markets bears the consequences and your losses are limited to your account balance (3.5), the negative balance protection the CMA has required of licensed brokers since its Circular No. 03/2023. Pooled client money is kept apart from the company's, but that 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. IC Markets' regulation page says external audits supplement its accounting; we found no financial statements.

The payment rail involves other companies. Our M-Pesa prompt asked us to pay onexent-technologies-ltd, the processor page was Centiwise's, and the deposit email said certain payments may be processed by an associated entity for and on behalf of Raw Trading Ltd (IC Markets); the email's timestamp ran on Australian time, as does the withdrawal cut-off. The withdrawal came back from Onexent Technologies Ltd too, not from IC Markets (KE) Limited or Centiwise by name. Onexent is the company behind Centiwise: Centiwise's website calls itself "your payment gateway partner", says it is "powered by OneXent Technologies Limited" and gives a Nairobi address, and Onexent's own site describes "payment solutions designed to support high risk merchants, including FOREX and iGaming" (read 3 November 2026). Neither site mentions IC Markets or Raw Trading Ltd; on what we read, Onexent is the payment processor, not the broker. That affects how money moves, not who holds the account.

Complaints go to IC Markets first. The Complaint Handling Policy (December 2024) aims to respond within seven business days and to resolve a complaint within thirty, with escalation to the compliance officer and the managing director, and says a rejected complaint can be taken to the CMA.

See our guide to the Capital Markets Authority.

Safety signals

Opening was fully online. The application has five steps: personal details (Kenya as the country of residence, your name as on your ID, email and a +254 mobile); more about you (individual or corporate, date of birth, address, nationality, tax identification number and ID type); the trading account (MetaTrader 5, MetaTrader 4 or cTrader, Standard or Raw Spread, and a base currency from AUD, USD, EUR, GBP, CHF, NZD, JPY, SGD, CAD or HKD, with no shilling option); a review; and a security question with a declaration accepting the Terms, Order Execution Policy, Privacy Policy and Risk Disclosure Notice. It took us about ten minutes on 24 October 2026. Unusually, it asks no suitability questions; those come next.

Inside the client area, "Verify your Account" asks for employment details, financial information (annual income, source of funds, size of wealth, the purpose of the account, expected deposits, and US tax and politically exposed person questions) and an appropriateness assessment on your CFD experience and qualifications, which IC Markets says it uses to decide whether you are eligible. Then you upload a government photo ID, front and back, and a proof of residence dated within 90 days. Verification is a manual review, not an instant check: IC Markets said it was reviewing our application and would confirm by email. The same step offers "Complete later, fund now", and we did fund before hearing back. By 2 November 2026 the client area's profile showed the account status as approved; we did not capture when the approval came.

The open account screen lists three live accounts, all with no minimum deposit: Raw Spread on MetaTrader (from 0.0 pips plus USD 3.50 per lot per side), Raw Spread on cTrader (USD 3 per USD 100,000) and Standard (from 0.8 pips, no commission). We traded on an MT5 Raw Spread account.

1. 1
   Personal details

   Country of residence Kenya, name as on your ID, email and a +254 mobile.

2. 2
   About you

   Individual or corporate, date of birth, address, nationality, tax identification number and ID type.

3. 3
   Configure the account

   MetaTrader 5, MetaTrader 4 or cTrader; Standard or Raw Spread; and a base currency, with no shilling option.

4. 4
   Review and declare

   A security question, and a declaration accepting the Terms, Order Execution Policy, Privacy Policy and Risk Disclosure Notice.

5. 5
   Verify in the client area

   Employment, financial information and an appropriateness assessment, then a photo ID and a proof of residence, reviewed manually.

The deposit page lists Visa and MasterCard, Neteller, Skrill and M-Pesa, all instant and free, and SWIFT or local bank wire through Credit Bank at 1 to 5 business days, also free. IC Markets (KE) says it charges no deposit or withdrawal fees and does not accept payments from third parties.

We deposited KSh 1,300 by M-Pesa on 26 October 2026. The form showed it as USD 9.89, about 131.45 KES per USD, into our cTrader account. The processor page was "IC Markets K Centiwise MPS KES", and the M-Pesa prompt on our phone asked us to pay onexent-technologies-ltd, a name you may not expect. IC Markets' "cTrader Deposit Confirmation" email arrived at 13:48, three minutes later, marking USD 9.89 as approved, and adding that certain payments may be processed by an associated entity for and on behalf of Raw Trading Ltd (IC Markets). We then moved the money to our MT5 account; the MT5 history shows two transfers in from the cTrader account, USD 9.88 and USD 1.14, more than our captured deposit. We have not established where the extra USD 1.14 came from.

Withdrawals go back to the method you deposited with, and every request has to be confirmed by a link in an email. Requests made by 05:00 East Africa Time (12:00 Australian Eastern Standard Time, or 04:00 EAT in the Australian summer) are processed that day; later ones the next business day. With no open positions you can withdraw your full balance. We asked for USD 10.82 by M-Pesa through Centiwise at 15:53 on 26 October, quoted as KSh 1,368.73, about 126.50 KES per USD, with no fee. It was after the cut-off, so it was processed the next business day: the M-Pesa message confirmed KSh 1,369.00 received from Onexent Technologies Ltd at 15:52 on Tuesday 27 October, about 24 hours after the request and KSh 0.27 more than the quote. We did not capture the client area's completed status or a confirmation email.

Because there is no shilling account, both legs are converted: 131.45 KES per USD in on 26 October and about 126.52 out on 27 October, about 3.8 percent lost across the round trip, even though IC Markets applies no separate conversion fee.

Funding methods

The MT5 web terminal's market list showed 61 forex pairs, 25 indices, 29 commodities, 9 bond CFDs and 7,594 stock CFDs on 26 October 2026, and IC Markets' range of products page adds futures CFDs. We saw no crypto group, so crypto CFDs do not appear to be offered to Kenyan clients. Every instrument is a CFD, so there is no ownership of the underlying. We traded AUD/SGD only.

On a Raw Spread account the cost of a trade is the raw spread plus a commission of USD 3.50 per lot per side on MetaTrader (USD 7 per lot round turn), or USD 3 per USD 100,000 on cTrader. Our 0.01 lot AUD/SGD trade paid USD 0.08 commission. The Standard account has no commission and quotes spreads from 0.8 pips instead.

IC Markets' spreads page, captured on 24 October 2026, gives EUR/USD a minimum of 0 and an average of 0.01 pips on Raw Spread, and for Standard a minimum of 0.8 and an average of 0.1. An average cannot sit below the minimum, so one of the two figures appears to be wrong; the page's headline gives an average EUR/USD spread of 0.1 pips. We did not trade EUR/USD on a live account, so there is no observed live spread to set beside those figures; a demo Standard account in the MT5 app showed 0.9 pips on 26 October.

Swaps are variable and charged three times on Wednesdays (Forex Product Specification); our trade closed the same day and paid none. The forex contract is 100,000 units, from 0.01 to 200 lots (50 for exotics), with no minimum stop distance, leverage up to 1:400, a margin call at 100 percent and a stop-out at 50 percent. We found no inactivity or dormancy fee in the Terms. There is no stated conversion fee, but the M-Pesa rates cost about 3.8 percent over a round trip on 26 and 27 October.

IC Markets offers MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 and cTrader, each with a web version and apps. We traded on the MT5 web terminal, connected to the IC Markets (KE) Limited server ICMarketsKE-MT5-7: an AUD/SGD market order with a stop loss and take profit, opened and closed without problems, with the commission shown in the deal history. The client area also has a trades dashboard that exports open positions and history for all three platforms, a VPS offer, and demo accounts on each platform with a chosen balance and leverage. We did not trade on cTrader or MetaTrader 4.

There are two apps. We followed our live account in the MetaTrader 5 app on the ICMarketsKE-MT5-7 server, with its history, deals, news, mailbox, journal, economic calendar, traders community and MQL5 algo trading, and opened a demo account on ICMarketsKE-Demo. The IC Markets client portal app manages the account itself, with live chat, contacts and FAQs. We used Tradays alongside for the economic calendar. We saw no stability problem. We did not see a two-factor login option in either.

IC Markets serves Kenya through IC Markets (KE) Limited, a CMA-licensed company with a Nairobi office, under Terms governed by Kenyan law. M-Pesa deposits and withdrawals are free and run in shillings, and there is a Kenyan phone line. The gaps are the currency, since there is no shilling account and the M-Pesa round trip cost us about 3.8 percent, and the timing, since withdrawals run to a cut-off set by Australian time. Asked whether Kenyan clients can have a swap-free account, a live chat agent said on 2 November 2026 that IC offers Islamic (swap-free) accounts "to clients of Muslim faith only", chosen at registration or converted on request by email to support. The terms the agent linked were a global document named for the FSA rather than IC Markets (KE) Limited's, so we have not confirmed the conditions that apply here.

IC Markets says its customer service is available 24/7. Its Kenyan contact page gives a phone line, +254 20 3895082, and email addresses including support@icmarkets.co.ke and clientrelations@icmarkets.co.ke; the office page gives hours of 09:00 to 17:00 East Africa Time, Monday to Saturday. The live chat is an AI virtual assistant that asks for your email address before it answers. On 2 November 2026 we tried it again in the app, where it now carries the brand IC. Asked to connect us to an agent, it said it could not help and offered the support team at 4:33 PM; when we said we wanted the team, it replied that agents were available and someone would join shortly. By 16:44 an agent had answered our question about swap-free accounts, about ten minutes after the offer, with links to IC's global Islamic account page and terms. We did not call the phone line or email support.

The MetaTrader 5 app brings news, an economic calendar, a traders community and MQL5 algo trading, and the web terminal has a market analysis panel. IC Markets' Kenyan site advertises weekly IC Markets (KE) webinars, but their schedule is not on icmarkets.co.ke: the upcoming list we found on 3 November 2026 was on IC's global site, run by Raw Trading Ltd, with 25 sessions that month in English, Spanish and Arabic, none of them mentioning Kenya. The education section itself is short: an overview, two explainers on the advantages of forex and of CFDs, and a Web TV page presented with Trading Central, with no course or lessons. The help pages add an economic calendar, forex calculators and a glossary of about 210 terms, and account holders can subscribe to daily forecasts from Autochartist or Trading Central through the client area, with a set of advanced MetaTrader 4 tools for live accounts. We found no Swahili material, and we did not join a webinar or use the tools.