IC Markets Login From South Africa: Two Credential Sets, and One Check Worth Doing First

Sort the portal problem from the terminal problem

The four steps below are ordered by how often each one turns out to be the real cause. Work down and do not skip: repeated attempts on the same details are what triggers a temporary lock, and a locked session turns a two-minute fix into a support ticket answered in English at whatever hour it lands.

1. Open the client area by typing secure.ic.com yourself, and sign in on the registered email address; a trading account number is never a valid portal login.
2. For a terminal, take the numbered account, its own password and the exact server string out of the portal on a second device rather than out of memory.
3. Paste the server string rather than typing it: one wrong character returns the same invalid-account message a wrong password does, which is precisely why the two get confused.
4. Only then reach for a reset link, and write down which of the two credentials you have just changed.

Before the password: check who the account belongs to

The sign-in screens are identical everywhere in the world. What is specific to South Africa sits one step earlier, and it is worth doing once rather than never. IC Markets is a brand used by more than one company. On the broker's own registration feed a South African resident is routed by default to Raw Trading Ltd, a Seychelles company holding Securities Dealer's licence SD018 from the Seychelles Financial Services Authority. Separately, a South African group company, International Capital Markets (Pty) Ltd, holds FSCA licence FSP 50715 with status Authorised — a public record on the FSCA's own register, not a claim made by this page or by the broker. They are different legal persons, and a licence held by one does not travel to the other.

There is a concrete reason this belongs at the login screen rather than in an appendix. The FSCA has published public warnings, first on 28 March 2023 and repeated since, about individuals impersonating International Capital Markets (Pty) Ltd on messaging apps and social platforms to take money from South Africans. Impersonation lives exactly where credentials get typed. Two habits close most of that gap: reach the client area by typing the address yourself rather than following a link somebody sent you, and check FSP 50715 against the FSCA register directly whenever a licence number is quoted at you.

No South Africa office and no South Africa-language line are advertised, and published support runs 24 hours a day, Monday to Sunday, in English. A locked session in Johannesburg is therefore not a time-zone problem — the queue is open — but it is an English-language one.

Why the portal and the trading terminal behave like two different accounts

The Secure Client Portal is the administrative side of IC Markets: it is where deposits, withdrawals, new accounts and platform downloads live, and it recognises the email address you registered with. MetaTrader and cTrader are the trading side, and they know nothing about that email - they authenticate a numbered trading account against a server. One relationship, two credential sets, which is why a working portal sign-in proves nothing about a trading terminal.

That split is also where the most common false alarm comes from. Someone resets the portal password, the portal opens, the terminal keeps refusing, and the account looks broken. It is not: the reset touched one credential and left the other untouched, because they were never the same credential in the first place.

What login does not change for a reader in South Africa

The sign-in mechanics above are identical for every IC Markets client, wherever they are. What is South Africa-specific sits one level up: the broker's own registration feed defaults a South African resident to Raw Trading Ltd of Seychelles, and a separate FSCA-licensed South African company, International Capital Markets (Pty) Ltd (FSP 50715), also exists under the same brand name. None of that changes how a password reset works, but it is worth confirming which entity your account agreement actually names before the login screen is the only thing on your mind.

Clearing a refused sign-in, in order

1. Start with the wording of the error: anything naming a numbered account is the terminal, anything naming an email address is the portal.
2. Portal failures are almost always the wrong identifier — the registered email works, the account number does not.
3. Terminal failures are almost always the server line, so copy it out of the portal on a second device and compare it character by character.
4. Paste rather than retype, and watch for a trailing space: the terminal counts it and you cannot see it.
5. Reset last rather than first, and note which of the two credentials the reset actually changed.

Work the list once. Retrying the same details is what triggers the temporary lock, and a locked session then has to be cleared through a queue that answers in English, from outside South Africa.

Which sign-in refused you, and what it was expecting

Both the numbered account and its server string are printed in the portal beside the account. A terminal will not connect on one of the two, and a wrong server line is the most common cause of a message that reads like a password failure.

Account facts support may ask you to confirm

A support agent will check your account against these published terms, taken from the broker's own pages on 2 September 2026. Confirm the current version before you trade; leverage means a high risk of losing money.

Which pricing your account should be showing

If your statement does not match the row you believe you are on, the likeliest explanation is that you are signed in to a different account. Leverage carries a high risk of losing money.

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