Since Exness is governed by the FSCA and FCA, two Top Tier authorities, we believe they are secure. Exness is a good choice for us because of its very low spread (even with their Standard Account), greater selection of trading instruments, excellent support, and quick withdrawal options. However, based on our tests, Exness’ assistance is not the best.
Exness was established in 2008 and is currently one of the top brokers in the world in terms of daily trading volume, with over 2 trillion USD in May 2022. (As per the latest financial reports on their website). We believe that since they are a well-respected broker who is also governed by the FSCA, FCA, and CySEC, dealing with them is risk-free for South African traders and thus is the best forex brokers in south Africa.
Even with their Standard account, their spreads for forex pairings are very competitive; on average, they are about 1 pip for EUR/USD (according to the contract parameters on their website). With their Pro account, the spread averages 0.6 pips, while with their Zero & Raw Spread accounts, it can be as low as 0 pips (plus a 7 USD commission). Total, we discovered Tickmill to have lower overall fees for commission-based account categories, whereas Exness had one of the lowest spreads for Standard accounts.
Additionally, they don’t charge any fees for deposits or withdrawals or for inactivity. Therefore, their whole pricing is relatively reasonable.
Exness provides both the most recent MT5 platform and MT4 (you can choose), which we think is good. Additionally, they offer a great selection of accounts, including basic and Pro accounts. They offer CFDs on 10 metals, 35 cryptocurrencies, 3 energies (oil), 100+ equities, and 10 indices, among other CFDs.
For South African dealers, their funding & withdrawal options are fairly convenient. All major banks are supported, and there is a local Online banking transfer option for deposits and withdrawals. With this method, deposits and withdrawals can be made instantly. However, some users have expressed frustration with Exness withdrawal problems and exorbitant currency conversion fees for ZAR withdrawals.
Although Exness offers good customer service, we didn’t think it was the greatest because of the slow and delayed response times. Exness offers live chat help five days a week, 24 hours a day, but only to logged-in users. Although we found their chat help to be courteous, there were connection issues during our test, and the support staff took a long time to respond to our questions. In certain testing, it took several days to receive a response to questions we addressed to their support email due to how slowly they respond to inquiries. Additionally, they don’t have a local South African phone number.
Exness Pros
- Since Exness is an FCA (UK) and FSCA (FSP No. 51024)-registered forex broker, trading with them is regarded as secure.
- Even with their Standard accounts, they offer very competitive spreads (on the order of 1 pip for EUR/USD).
- Traders in South Africa have the option of opening an Exness ZAR base currency account, which has nearly $0 pip cost.
- No withdrawal or deposit costs (but currency conversion fees apply). Furthermore, they provide rapid withdrawal options and accept local online bank transfers in South Africa.
- More than 100 currency pairings are offered for FX trading. Exness offers a wide selection of CFD trading products, including CFDs on Gold, Cryptos, 78 US Stocks, and Indices.
- The major pair EURUSD has an average 1 pip spread using their Standard
IC Markets
Since IC Markets has been in business since 2007, we believe they are safe for traders in South Africa because they are a reputable broker and are also regulated by numerous regulators. Due to this, merchants can trade with them at a somewhat low risk which makes it the best forex broker.
IC Markets provides Standard accounts and Raw Spread trading accounts. For most CFD instruments, the spread is as minimal as 0.1 pips with raw spread accounts (plus $5–6 commission per Normal Lot based on your platform, which may be MetaTrader or cTrader). The spread is reasonable with Standard Account as well, averaging 0.62 pips for EUR/USD according to our benchmark check.
