Founded in 1998, Alpari is one of the largest online forex and CFDs broker in the online forex industry. The broker currently has more than 2 million clients across 150 countries. Alpari is also one of the pioneering brokers in the industry to offer its clients the popular MetaTrader trading platforms developed by MetaQuotes Software. With its trading platforms, traders at Alpari can easily access more than 50 different currencies pairs as well as a wide selection of CFDs across various asset classes.
Alpari has provided its traders with a dozen different types of trading accounts. The accounts are geared towards different categories of traders and investors. For independent trading, traders at Alpari can choose from a normal trading account to an ECN type trading account. For investors, Alpari also offers the PAMM accounts to help money managers streamline their investment activities. Perhaps most importantly of all, Alpari offers its clients dependability and reassurance.
Contact Info
- Website: www.alpari.com/en/
- Support: +44 8449 869559
- Office address: PO BOX 1510, Suite 305, Griffith Corporate Centre, Kingstown, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines
Alpari’s Reputation as an International Broker
With its long operational history, you might well think it has been plain sailing for Alpari to reach the stage where it is now in the industry. Nevertheless it is only fair to acknowledge the Alpari brand has also met its own share of challenges over the years. For example, as a result of the trading losses suffered by Alpari UK due to the move by the Swiss Central Bank to unpeg the franc from the Euro, Alpari UK went into insolvency in January 2015. In the same year, Alpari’s NFA membership was also revoked by the US regulatory authority resulting in Alpari being prevented from offering its services to US based clients. Nevertheless, over the last few years, Alpari has managed to redeem its tarnished reputation and has emerged ever stronger than before. Today, the broker boasts of having more than 2 million clients across 150 countries.
Trading the Financial Markets with Alpari
Alpari only offers its traders a modest selection of financial instruments for its traders to trade with. The instruments comprise of 46 forex pairs, 2 commodity CFDs, 11 Index CFDs, 2 metals CFDs and 5 types of cryptocurrency* CFDs. These instruments can be traded with leverage as high as 1:1000. Nevertheless, the key benefit for traders dealing with Alpari is the security of their funds – Alpari through its long term relationship with banks have teamed up with leading banks to ensure that the traders’ funds are kept in financially stable tier 1 banks in segregated accounts. In addition, Alpari’s website is secured with advanced encryption to protect its servers from unauthorized access. Finally, Alpari operates with transparent trading conditions, hence traders will be able trade with confidence.
*Availability is subject to regulations
Account Types
Alpari offers 2 different categories of trading accounts, for independent trading and for investors. For independent trading, trades have a choice of 6 different types of trading accounts. They are the Nano MT4 account, the Standard MT4 account, the Standard MT5 account, the ECN MT4 account, the ECN Pro MT4 account and the ECN MT5 account. Alpari also makes it easy for traders to sign up with it by not imposing any minimum deposit requirement for its starter level account. Even the professional level trading account has a low minimum deposit requirement of just $500. For the investor level clients, Alpari offers 3 types of PAMM trading accounts, the PAMM MT4 account, the PAMM MT5 account and the PAMM ECN MT4 account. The key difference between the trading accounts for independent trading and the PAMM account is the fact that with the latter type of trading accounts, it is possible to manage several clients’ accounts simultaneously.
Spreads
Depending on the type of trading accounts, the spreads offered by Alpari are very competitive. For the benchmark EUR/USD, the minimum spread is as low as 0.2 pip. As for the trading platforms adopted by Alpari, they consist of the industry proven MT4 and MT5 platforms. These platforms are robust and come with a wide array of trading tools integrated into them. But the MetaTrader trading platforms are most well known for the comprehensive charting package and their ability to support automated trading. With the use of programming scripts called “Expert Advisors (EAs), traders can automate their trading activities.
Payment Methods
As for the payment options supported by Alpari, they can be grouped into 3 main methods, bank wire transfers, credit/debit cards transfers and eWallet transfers. For eWallets, Alpari supports Skrill, Neteller, WebMoney, BitPay and FasaPay. As for card transfers, the supported cards are VISA, MasterCard and UnionPay. The average processing time for withdrawals at Alpari is between 2 to 3 business days.
Incentives and Promotions
For loyal traders at Alpari, the broker offers several incentives in the form of Cashback, promotional offers and attractive prizes from trading contests. Regular traders at Alpari will be able to earn points each time they trade under the Alpari’s Cashback Program. With the points earned, they will be able to redeem them in the form of rebates on fees spent while trading. For premium clients, Alpari goes a step further by offering them advance account funding and 100% compensation for deposit commission. Alpari regularly hold trading contests for its traders to participate in. In 2018 alone, the total value of prizes awarded in the contests held by Alpari amounted to $100,000. From our observation, there is no doubt that Alpari has managed to spring back from the negative hit on its reputation when its UK subsidiary had to be liquidated due to the losses suffered in the 2015 Swiss franc fiasco. Nevertheless, if there is still any more doubt about the reliability of this broker, one could always sign up for a demo account first before committing any real money.
