IC Markets South Africa: FSP 50715, and the Company That Actually Holds Your Account

What is genuinely checkable about IC Markets

• Costs are published in a checkable form: USD 3.50 per lot per side on Raw Spread, USD 0 commission with spreads from 0.8 pips on Standard (checked 2 September 2026)
• International Capital Markets (Pty) Ltd, a South African group company, is a public, searchable record on the FSCA's own register (FSP 50715, status Authorised) — genuinely verifiable, unlike a purely offshore-only setup
• No minimum deposit on Raw Spread, cTrader Raw Spread or Standard, so an account can be opened small and tested
• Wide platform choice - MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5, cTrader and TradingView - with MetaTrader servers in Equinix NY4, New York

Explore the specifics

Also on this site: MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 setup and the Equinix NY4 server location, a free demo that sidesteps the SARB allowance question entirely, sign-in help for the portal versus the trading terminals, and support channels with realistic waiting times.

The money-side pages sit here. Opening an account covers the two forks inside registration: which group company ends up signing the agreement, and which of the ten published base currencies replaces the rand. The margin and pip calculator is worked on the banded leverage ladder rather than the headline ratio, with the rand conversion the arithmetic never includes. Gold is treated as what it is from here, a dollar contract carrying a USD 62 per lot overnight holding fee on Swap Free. And today's market wire is read against a South African session clock, since SAST never moves and every other clock in the story does.

IC Markets South Africa — the verdict in one paragraph

A South African group company, International Capital Markets (Pty) Ltd, holds a real, checkable FSCA licence - FSP 50715, status Authorised, a public record on the FSCA's own register. That does not automatically make it the entity on your own account: IC Markets' own registration feed defaults South Africa to branch 3, the Raw Trading Ltd (Seychelles, FSA licence SD018) branch used worldwide, so confirm the counterparty named on your client agreement rather than assume the local licence applies. The FSCA has also repeatedly warned the public about individuals impersonating the South African entity online, which makes verifying FSP 50715 yourself on the FSCA's own register worth the two minutes it takes. Moving money to an offshore counterparty falls under the South African Reserve Bank's exchange control allowances - R2 million a year without tax clearance, up to R10 million more with it - and every rand still converts into one of ten base currencies that does not include ZAR, since IC Markets has no South Africa-specific payment rail. The published trading costs themselves are checkable: USD 3.50 per lot per side on Raw Spread, USD 0 commission with spreads from 0.8 pips on Standard, no minimum deposit on either. CFD trading carries a high risk of losing money. Read what other users report on Trustpilot alongside this page, not instead of it.

Who IC Markets is, and which company is actually licensed in South Africa

IC Markets is a trading brand used by several distinct legal entities. Worldwide, the default is Raw Trading Ltd, a Seychelles company (registration 8419879-1) trading as IC and IC Markets Global, holding Securities Dealer's licence SD018 from the Seychelles Financial Services Authority. The same group also names IC Markets (EU) Ltd in Cyprus (CySEC licence CIF 362/18), International Capital Markets Pty Ltd in Australia (ASIC) and IC Trading (Mauritius) Ltd on its own pages, checked 2 September 2026.

South Africa has its own, separately licensed group company: International Capital Markets (Pty) Ltd, trading as IC Markets, holds FSCA licence FSP 50715 with status Authorised, a public record on the FSCA's own register. This is a distinct legal person from Raw Trading Ltd, and its name is close enough to the Australian "International Capital Markets Pty Ltd" that a reader could easily assume one licence covers both - it does not. Each is licensed by a different regulator; only the specific FSP or registration number in the relevant register tells you which company you are actually dealing with.

Which one holds a South African retail client's account? On the broker's own registration feed, South Africa is served by default on branch 3 - the Raw Trading Ltd/FSA branch used worldwide, checked 2 September 2026. That default-branch flag is a sign-up routing status, not a licence, and it points toward the offshore Seychelles entity rather than the FSCA-licensed South African one. Read your own client agreement for the entity it actually names before you fund anything; do not assume the FSCA licence extends automatically to whichever company your paperwork names.

FSP 50715 on the FSCA's own register: what it covers, and a live scam warning

FSP 50715 is a public record, searchable on the FSCA's own register at www2.fsca.co.za: International Capital Markets (Pty) Ltd, status Authorised. An "Authorised" status under the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act means that specific South African company may render the financial services listed against its licence - it does not, by itself, say anything about Raw Trading Ltd in Seychelles, which is a different company under different regulation.

The FSCA has repeatedly published public warnings, first on 28 March 2023 and repeated since, about individuals impersonating International Capital Markets (Pty) Ltd on WhatsApp, Facebook and other platforms to defraud people out of investment funds - a real, sourced incident specific to this brand's South African name, not a hypothetical risk. The practical takeaway: verify FSP 50715 yourself on the FSCA's own FSP search tool, and never take a licence number, a link or a phone number on trust from someone who contacted you first.

SARB exchange control: the allowance that gates money leaving South Africa

Funding an account held by an offshore company such as Raw Trading Ltd in Seychelles means money leaving South Africa, which falls under the South African Reserve Bank's exchange control rules rather than under anything IC Markets itself publishes. In a 2026 exchange control circular, the SARB raised the Single Discretionary Allowance (SDA) - the amount a South African resident may send abroad each calendar year without SARS tax clearance, for any permitted purpose including this kind of transfer - from R1 million to R2 million. A further Foreign Investment Allowance (FIA) of up to R10 million a year is available with a SARS tax compliance status pin, so R12 million a year is the combined ceiling if both are fully used.

This page is not tax or exchange-control advice, and a bank applying these rules at the point of transfer works from its own compliance checks, not from this site. Verify the current SDA and FIA figures at the South African Reserve Bank's own pages before assuming either number still applies, since exchange control limits are revised from time to time.

No rand account, so every deposit converts at least once

IC Markets publishes ten account base currencies - USD, AUD, EUR, GBP, SGD, NZD, JPY, CHF, HKD and CAD - and ZAR is not among them, checked 2 September 2026. Nor does the broker publish a South Africa-specific funding rail: its own funding page names a Thailand rail (Thai Internet Banking) and a Vietnam rail (Vietnamese Internet Banking) explicitly, and lists no equivalent for South Africa. A card, PayPal, Neteller, Skrill or wire transfer from South Africa therefore converts rand into one of those ten currencies before it reaches the account, and the exact markup applied to that conversion is not published by IC Markets - it sits with your card network, bank or payment provider, worth checking on your own statement rather than assumed.

The broker itself charges no deposit or withdrawal fee, a genuine, checkable point in its favour. It does not remove the currency-conversion step a rand-funded account runs into twice - once funding the account, again on any withdrawal back to a South African bank account.

SAST against servers in New York and London

MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 run on servers in the Equinix NY4 data centre in New York; cTrader runs from London, checked 2 September 2026. South Africa Standard Time (SAST) is a fixed UTC+2 all year, with no daylight-saving shift, while New York alternates between UTC-5 and UTC-4 and London between UTC+0 and UTC+1. For most of the year South Africa sits 6 hours ahead of the MetaTrader servers and 1 hour ahead of the cTrader server; outside the Northern-Hemisphere daylight-saving months that widens to 7 hours and 2 hours respectively - worth checking against your own terminal's server-time display around the US and UK clock-change dates rather than assumed as a fixed gap.

The same arithmetic applies to published cut-off times. IC Markets' withdrawal request cut-off is stated as 12:00 AEST/AEDT (Australian time), which lands at roughly 04:00-05:00 SAST depending on the Australian daylight-saving calendar - a request made in the South African morning can land on either side of that line.

What this page is, and what it is not

This is an independent, affiliate-supported review of IC Markets for readers in South Africa. It is not the broker's own site, it does not accept deposits, and it does not offer trading, legal or tax advice. Every figure above is dated and sourced to the broker's own published pages, to the FSCA's own register, or to the South African Reserve Bank, and the parts we could not verify - a founding year, a specific document list for verification - are stated as unverified rather than filled with a plausible-sounding guess.

CFD trading carries a high risk of losing money, and leverage magnifies losses as readily as gains. Check FSP 50715 on the FSCA's own register, read the broker's own client agreement for the entity it names, and treat this page as one input among several rather than the final word.