Scope Markets Review Kenya 2026

SCFM Limited, trading as Scope Markets and part of the Rostro Group, holds CMA Licence Number 123 as a non-dealing online foreign exchange broker. We confirmed it on the CMA licensee register, where a search for SCFM Limited returns licence 123, one of 14 non-dealing online foreign exchange brokers, and it was still listed there on 27 October 2026. Scope Markets does not appear in the CMA's public caution of 11 September 2026. Scope's footer and documents also cite a derivatives broker licence: the Terms give it as number 143 (clause 1.2) and list Scope as authorised to act as both a non-dealing foreign exchange broker and a derivatives broker (clause 7.1). The CMA's list of derivatives brokers names SCFM Limited as a derivatives broker, but at licence 124; we did not find a licence 143 on it when we checked on 24 and 27 October 2026. Scope's documents do not explain the difference. Scope's group page says the licence that applies to a client depends on which Rostro company they register with; for a Kenyan client of scopemarkets.co.ke, that is SCFM Limited.

The company that onboards Kenyan clients is the licensed company itself. The Terms and Conditions (version 04.2026) are with SCFM Limited and governed by the laws of Kenya (clause 36.1). Our M-Pesa prompt asked us to pay Scope Markets, and our withdrawal arrived from SCOPE MARKETS.

Scope's documents describe it as the other side of your CFD trades. The CMA's 2017 Regulations define a non-dealing online foreign exchange broker as one that "acts as a link between the foreign exchange market and a client in return for a commission or mark-up in spreads and does not engage in market making activities" (reg. 2). Scope's Order Execution Policy (version 11.2023) says that "for the purpose of order execution for CFDs, the Company acts as principal" and is "the sole Execution Venue for the execution of all Clients' orders" (clause 19), and the Terms say Scope will "act as a counter-party for the Client's Transactions" (clause 7.2). The same policy allows it to pass an order on for execution to another company in its group or to an outside broker (clause 21), and says its charges may be a mark-up between the price at which it takes a principal position and the price it gives you (clause 17). The documents do not say how often orders are passed on, which of Scope's two licences covers its CFD trades, or how principal dealing fits the non-dealing licence. We have seen nothing to suggest Scope acts outside its licences.

Client money starts out protected: the Terms say it is held in trust or escrow bank accounts, pooled for all clients and kept apart from Scope's own money (18.1). But where Scope passes your money to an exchange, a clearing house, a broker or another financial institution, for a trade or as collateral, it treats that as a transfer of full ownership: "you no longer have a proprietary claim over the money", and if Scope fails you rank as a general creditor for it (18.2). The Terms also say clients do not benefit from any statutory or other compensation scheme for forex trading (10.19), 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 not clearly stated. The Risk Disclosure Statement (version 11.2023) says that "you cannot lose more than the equity", then in the next paragraph that you "may also be liable for losses that exceed the amount of margin you post", and later that leverage "can result in loss up to and in excess of deposits and margin". The Terms let Scope set a negative balance on one account off against money in your other accounts and wallets (12.8). The CMA has required negative balance protection of licensed online forex brokers since its Circular No. 03/2023. Scope's Risk Disclosure Statement says you cannot lose more than your equity, but its documents do not set out how the protection works. Scope's legal page lists 2026 half-year and 2025 full-year financial statements; we have not read them.

Complaints go to Scope first. The Complaints and Dispute Resolution Policy (version 06.2026) asks for a written complaint to complaints-scfm@scopemarkets.co.ke, promises an acknowledgement within two business days, aims to resolve it within 14 calendar days with up to a further month for complex cases, and says an unresolved complaint can be taken to the CMA. Scope does not serve residents of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, any European Union country, Iceland or Norway, or a list of sanctioned countries (Restricted Countries Policy).

See our guide to the Capital Markets Authority.

Safety signals

Registration is a single form: name, email, country of residence (Kenya), a +254 phone number and a password, then an activation link by email. The client portal then shows four verification steps, and until they are approved it sets your deposit and withdrawal limits at USD 0, so unlike some brokers Scope does not let you fund before you are verified.

Personal Info asks for your name as on your ID, date of birth, country of birth, estate and town, a tax (KRA PIN) number, an ID or passport number, a phone number registered in your name, whether you hold dual citizenship, and a next of kin's details, and you accept the Privacy Policy, the Client Agreement for FX and CFDs, the Risk Disclosure Statement and the Product Sensitisation Framework. Employment Status and Financial Background asks for your employment, annual income, savings and investments, property, source of wealth and intended first deposit in US dollars, with the example "1 USD = 100 KES". Knowledge and Experience is a single question on whether you have trading experience or a relevant qualification. Documents asks for the front and back of a government photo ID and, for Kenyan residents, a KRA PIN certificate or a bank statement as proof of residence. We were not asked for a selfie or a liveness check.

Each step went to "Pending Approval" on 24 October 2026, a manual review, and the account showed "Verified" when we returned on 26 October; we did not capture when the approval came. Opening a trading account is then a short dialog: live or demo, MetaTrader 5, an account type (Gold, Scope Invest, Silver or AllShare), the currency and the leverage. We opened a live Gold account in US dollars at 1:100.

1. 1
   Register

   Name, email, country of residence Kenya, a +254 phone number and a password, then an activation link by email.

2. 2
   Personal info

   Name as on your ID, date of birth, country of birth, estate and town, tax (KRA PIN) and ID numbers, dual citizenship and a next of kin, then consent to Scope's agreements.

3. 3
   Employment and finances

   Employment, annual income, savings and investments, property, source of wealth and an intended first deposit in US dollars.

4. 4
   Knowledge and experience

   One question on trading experience or a relevant qualification.

5. 5
   Documents

   Both sides of a government photo ID and a KRA PIN certificate or bank statement as proof of residence, reviewed manually.

Scope offers M-Pesa, bank transfer and Skrill, for deposits and for withdrawals; we saw no card option. We tested M-Pesa both ways on 26 October 2026.

To deposit, you pick the trading account and the currency, then enter the amount in US dollars: USD 10 showed as KSh 1,305.00 at a rate of 130.5. The M-Pesa prompt on the phone asked us to pay KSh 1,305 to Scope Markets, the portal reported the request "processed successfully", and Scope's "Deposit Successful" email, crediting USD 10.00, arrived at 17:31, the same minute. A second USD 10.00 deposit at 18:20 was credited the same way. There was no fee and no bonus: the account's credit stayed at zero.

The withdrawal was as quick. We asked for the whole balance, USD 20.30, to M-Pesa, quoted as KSh 2,609.00 at 128.5. The portal accepted the request, and the M-Pesa message confirming KSh 2,609.00 from SCOPE MARKETS and Scope's "Withdrawal Successful" email both arrived at 18:53, the minute we asked. There was no fee and no extra step: no code, email confirmation or face check. Scope's Withdrawal Policy (version 11.2023) says mobile money withdrawals are processed immediately, within one working day at most, with a minimum of USD 5; that bank withdrawals take one to two working days with a minimum of USD 1,500; and that requests after 18:00 East Africa Time wait for the next business day, which ours, at 18:53, did not. Withdrawals go back by the method you deposited with.

Because the account is in US dollars, both legs are converted. On 26 October the rates were 130.5 KES per USD in and 128.5 out, about 1.5 percent lost across the round trip, although Scope charges no separate conversion fee.

Scope's published limits do not agree with each other, or with what happened to us. Its payment methods page, which we captured on 27 October, sets a minimum deposit of USD 20 or the equivalent by M-Pesa, Skrill or Neteller and USD 50 by bank transfer, yet the portal accepted both of our USD 10.00 M-Pesa deposits. The same page puts the minimum withdrawal at USD 1 by M-Pesa and USD 50 by bank, with bank transfers taking 3 to 5 business days, where the Withdrawal Policy says USD 5, USD 1,500 and one to two working days. The page also lists Neteller, which the portal's deposit and withdrawal screens did not offer us, and says that Scope charges no fee on any method, though "normal Mpesa charges apply". When we asked in the live chat on 2 November 2026, the agent gave a third set: a minimum deposit of USD 10, which matches what the portal accepted from us, and a minimum withdrawal of USD 0.50. The agent also said mobile money transactions run 24/7, where the Withdrawal Policy holds requests after 18:00 to the next business day; our 18:53 withdrawal was paid at once.

Funding methods

Scope's MetaTrader 5 symbol list on 26 October 2026 had eight groups: forex (42), shares (262), energies (4), indices (14), futures (5), metals (5), commodities (8) and a two-symbol "Equities 24-7" group. The conditions pages fill in the detail: forex majors, minors and crosses; gold and silver against the dollar and gold against the euro; indices from the DAX, CAC and FTSE 100 to the Nasdaq 100, S&P 500, Nikkei, Hang Seng and South Africa 40; crude oil, Brent and natural gas; cocoa, coffee, sugar, orange juice, wheat and corn; VIX futures; and share CFDs from European markets, including Austria, Germany, Italy and Portugal on the pages we captured.

Everything above is a CFD, so you never own the underlying. Scope also lists fractional stocks, at 1:1 leverage with no commission or swap, and its Product Sensitisation Framework says shares bought on its platform are owned by you; we did not buy one, so we have not seen how they are held. There is no crypto group, so crypto does not appear to be offered to Kenyan clients. Leverage is up to 1:400 on forex, metals and indices and up to 1:10 on energies, commodities, futures and share CFDs.

On the Gold account we traded, the cost of a trade is a raw spread plus a commission. Our EUR/USD ticket showed 0.1 pips (1.11807 and 1.11808), and the quote after the fill 0.2 pips. Scope's conditions pages put the commission at USD 7.00 per lot on forex and metals, without naming an account type; our 0.01 lot trade paid USD 0.04 when it opened and USD 0.04 when it closed, which is USD 7 per lot round turn with each side rounded up. Commodities carry USD 10 per lot, VIX futures USD 120 and share CFDs 0.30 percent round turn; indices, energies and fractional stocks show no commission. Scope's home page says "Trade FX, metals, indices and more, commission-free", which does not describe the Gold account. The commission-free account is Silver, whose cost is built into a wider variable spread instead; Scope's Order Execution Policy says of many markets that its price "already includes our spread and there will be no additional fees or commissions due from you" (clause 17). We did not open a Silver account, so we have not seen its spreads.

The published spread column on the forex conditions page cannot be relied on: it steps down by 5 points a row, from 6 points to minus 74, and the swap columns rise and fall by fixed steps in the same way. Scope itself calls its published spreads and swaps indicative and points to the live MetaTrader 5 prices, which are what we quote.

Swaps are variable, set by Scope from its liquidity providers' overnight rates, applied at 23:59 server time and charged three times for the weekend (Terms 41.4 and 41.5); our trade closed the same day and paid none. There is no inactivity fee in the Terms, but an account with a zero balance and no trading or log-in for 180 days is archived and cannot be restored (24.1). There were no deposit or withdrawal fees on M-Pesa, and the only funding cost we met was the currency: about 1.5 percent over the M-Pesa round trip on 26 October.

Scope runs on MetaTrader 5, and the account dialog offered nothing else; we saw no MetaTrader 4, cTrader or platform of Scope's own. We traded on the MT5 web terminal: a EUR/USD market order with a stop loss and take profit, filled at 1.11814 and closed by hand at 1.11776, with the result booked to the account and shown in the portal's trading history. The web terminal has the usual MetaTrader toolkit: nine timeframes, indicators and drawing tools, a market watch and one-click trading. The client portal handles funding, transfers between accounts, verification and new accounts, and offers a demo account with USD 10,000 that expires after 30 days.

We did not test a mobile app. A Scope Markets app was launched on Google Play and the App Store in 2020 (Business Today, 20 July 2020), but a Google Play search on 27 October 2026 did not show one. On a phone, the client portal works in a mobile browser, which is how we checked the account on Android, and MetaTrader 5's own app can trade on Scope's server; we did not try it.

Scope serves Kenya through SCFM Limited, a CMA-licensed company with a Nairobi office, under Terms governed by Kenyan law. M-Pesa deposits and withdrawals are free and fast, and there are two Kenyan phone lines, WhatsApp and a live chat that a named agent picked up within the minute. A live chat agent told us on 2 November 2026 that swap-free accounts are available on request, though none appears in the account dialogs. The gaps: the account is held in US dollars, so every M-Pesa payment is converted (about 1.5 percent over our round trip), the agent did not answer whether a KES account is available, and Scope's own documents describe it as the counterparty to your CFD trades.

Scope's Kenyan contact page lists two phone lines, +254 709 580 400 and +254 730 831 000, the address support@scopemarkets.co.ke, WhatsApp (a link and a QR code) and a contact form, and the website and the client portal both have a chat button. The page gives no support hours; a live chat agent told us they are 07:00 to 22:00, Monday to Friday. Formal complaints go in writing to complaints-scfm@scopemarkets.co.ke.

We tested the live chat on 27 October 2026. The window, headed "KE Scope Markets" and "Typically replies within 3 minutes", opened with an automated welcome. We asked what the cut-off hours for withdrawals are, and while our message was still marked "now", a named agent joined the chat, replied "Good evening" and began typing an answer. We did not capture that answer, so we cannot say whether it matched the Withdrawal Policy's 18:00 cut-off, which our 18:53 withdrawal the day before had not waited for. We tried again on the afternoon of 2 November, from the client portal, where the window now read "Currently replying in under a minute". We asked for an agent, and a named agent greeted us within about a minute. We then sent four questions together, and within about three minutes had answers to most of them: a minimum deposit of USD 10 and a minimum withdrawal of USD 0.50, swap-free accounts "upon request", support hours of 7 am to 10 pm, Monday to Friday, mobile money transactions 24/7, and MetaTrader 5 as the only platform. The question about a KES account went unanswered. The chat closed with a satisfaction survey. We did not try the phone lines, email, WhatsApp or the form.

Our test did not cover research or education. The MetaTrader 5 web terminal brings the platform's own charts and indicators. Scope's site lists an education section with a CFD and forex trading guide, an economic calendar, a holiday calendar and an FAQ, but scopemarkets.co.ke would not let us read those pages when we checked on 3 November 2026, so we do not score research and education for Scope.