OANDA Review 2024

Rating 6.5/10

Max. Leverage

1:20

for Forex

Minimum Deposit

$0

EUR/USD Spread

1.1 pips

Benchmark

Visit Oanda Singapore

OANDA is a forex and CFD broker that offers trading services for forex (foreign exchange) currency pairs and CFDs indices, shares, metals, oil, cryptocurrencies and agricultural commodities.

OANDA was established in 1996 in the United States of America (USA), and the broker is licensed in multiple jurisdictions by top-tier financial regulators including the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

In our review of OANDA, we look at the trading conditions of the broker, fees, deposit/withdrawal options, available tradable instruments, supported trading platforms and customer support.

OANDA is a trading name of OANDA Corporation, which is incorporated in Delaware, USA. OANDA Corporation is registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and National Futures Association in the USA.

In addition to the MAS of Singapore, the broker is regulated by Tier-1 and Tier-2 financial regulators around the world under different names. Find some of the regulations of OANDA in various jurisdictions below:

1) Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS): OANDA is regulated in Asia by the Monetary Authority of Singapore as ‘OANDA Asia Pacific Pte Ltd’ and licensed to deal in capital market products.

2) Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC): OANDA is regulated in Australia by ASIC as OANDA Australia Pty Ltd and licensed to offer financial services with Australian Company Number (ACN) 152 088 349, issued in 2011.

3) Financial Conduct Authority (FCA): OANDA is regulated in the UK by the FCA and authorised to offer financial services under the name ‘OANDA Europe Limited’ with reference number 542574, issued in 2011.

4) Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA): OANDA is licensed in Europe as ‘OANDA Europe Markets Ltd’ by the FSA in Malta with registration C 95813, issued in 2020. OANDA serves residents of the EEA (European Economic Area) with this license.

5) Financial Services Commission (FSC), British Virgin Islands: OANDA is registered in the British Virgins Islands as OANDA Global Markets Ltd and Regulated by the FSC with license number SIBA/L/20/1130.

Leverage on OANDA depends on the instrument you are trading and your account type. The maximum leverage on OANDA is 1:20, which means that you can open a trade position worth up to 20 times the value of your deposit.

For example, with a deposit of $1000, you can open a trade position worth up to $20,000 to increase your profit potential. Note that it also exposes you to more risk.

The maximum leverage of 1:20 is for major forex and indices. Other limits are 1:10 for minor forex, 1:5 for minor indices, commodities (oil & agriculture), metals and bonds, and 1:2 for crypto assets. Note that the maximum leverage might become lower as the size of your trade increases.

Accredited investors on OANDA Singapore can access higher leverage of up to 1:50 for major forex pairs.

Note that trading with leverage exposes your capital to risk and you can lose all your money. It is best to avoid trading CFDs unless you understand it. It is important not to use all the leverage as it increases your risk.

OANDA offers 3 account types for clients in Singapore, depending on your trading experience level, the volume of your trades, and the fees you are comfortable paying.

You can open an account on OANDA as an individual, a partnership (joint account) or as a company (corporate account).

Find an overview of the account types on OANDA Singapore below:

1) Standard Account: The OANDA Standard Account is designed for all categories of traders, both beginners and experts. The account can be accessed on the MT4, MT5 and OANDA trading platforms. With this account, you can trade Forex pairs, indices, shares, cryptocurrencies, agriculture commodities, oil, and metals.

Spreads for the Standard Account on OANDA start from 0.6 pips for major pairs like EURUSD, you pay zero commission fees for opening and closing trade positions but will incur swap fees whenever you keep a trade position open past the market’s closing time.

There is no mandatory minimum deposit with this account type, a minimum lot size of 0.01 is required with maximum leverage of 1:20.

2) Premium Account: The OANDA Premium Account is a spread-only account designed for high-volume traders and can be accessed on the MT5 and OANDA trading platforms. With this account, you can trade Forex pairs, indices, shares, agriculture commodities, cryptocurrencies, oil, and metals.

This account is commission-free, spreads start from 0.6 pips for major pairs like EURUSD, and you pay swap fees whenever you keep a trade position open past the market’s closing time.

With the Premium Account, you are assigned a dedicated account manager, you have free deposits and withdrawals, and any bank charges are reimbursed. You also get priority support with a dedicated account manager, bonus from referral program and invites to premium clients events.

A minimum trade size of 0.01 lot is required with maximum leverage of 1:20. The required minimum deposit for this account is SG$20,000.

3) Premium Plus Account: The OANDA Premium Plus Account is a spread-only account designed for high-volume traders. With this account, you can trade Forex pairs, indices, shares, agriculture commodities, cryptocurrencies, oil, and metals.

This account is commission-free, spreads start from 0.6 pips for major pairs like EURUSD, and you pay swap fees whenever you keep a trade position open past the market’s closing time.

With the Premium Plus Account, you are assigned a dedicated account manager, you have free deposits and withdrawals, and any bank charges are reimbursed. You also get priority support with a dedicated account manager, invites to premium clients events, subsidised subscriptions, bonus from referral program and 1 to 1 access to the market analysts.

A minimum trade size of 0.01 lot is required with maximum leverage of 1:20. The required minimum deposit for this account is SG$100,000.

4) Accredited Investor (AI) Account: An Accredited Investor Account allows traders to be classified as an Elective Professional Client on OANDA Singapore which allows you to trade with a higher leverage limit of 1:50 for forex major pairs. Other pairs have leverage of 1:33 for forex minors and 1:25 for other forex pairs. Indices have a maximum leverage of 1:20, commodities(metals, agriculture, oil) and bonds have 1:5, and cryptos have 1:2.

In addition to trading with higher leverage, Accredited Investors get invited to client events and have access to a relationship manager.

To become an Accredited Investor on OANDA, you need to first open a standard, then apply by downloading and filling out the acknowledgement form then send it to the customer support email at [email protected]. with some verification documents.

You need to at least one of the following criteria before your application is approved.

1. You have net personal assets exceeding SG$2 million; or
2. You have net financial assets exceeding SG$1 million; or
3. You have an annual income of at least SG$300,000 in the last 12 months; or
4. You are a corporation with net assets exceeding SG$10 million

Note that all types on OANDA do not have negative balance protection and you can lose more the amounts deposits if your trade is unsuccessful.

OANDA Base Account Currency

Account base currencies available on OANDA are Singapore Dollar -SGD, United States Dollars – USD, Honk Kong Dollar – HKD, and Euros – EUR.

Upon signing up, you are assigned the USD and can change it. Although the Swap-free Account can only use the USD and is not allowed to change it.

Your deposits, trades, withdrawals, and fees are measured in your OANDA account currency.

OANDA charges different fees depending on the instrument you trade size and whether you are a retail or professional client. Here’s an overview of the broker’s trading and non-trading fees.

Trading fees

1) Spreads: When you trade a financial instrument on OANDA, the price you pay includes a markup that goes to the broker, the markup is called a spread. The spread is the difference between the bid and asks prices for a trade. The size of the spread depends on the instrument you are trading and your account type.

OANDA operates a variable spreads system, which means that the spreads will fluctuate during the day to reflect market movements. The minimum spread for majors like EURUSD is 1.1 pips for the Standard Account, but this changes as well.

2) Commission fees: OANDA offers commission-free trading in Singapore for Standard and Premium Accounts which means that you do not pay any fees when you enter or exit a trade position.

3) Swap fees: If you open a trade position and you do not close it before the closing time of the market, which is 5 PM ET, it will roll over to the next trading day, and you will be charged a rollover fee or overnight funding cost also called swap fees.

The fees will be added to your profit or loss when you eventually close the position. The fee is calculated based on the volume of your trade, the instrument you were trading, the leverage, and whether it was a long swap (buy) or a short swap (sell).

If your position was a long swap and the trade is successful, you gain swap interest, which is added to your profit.

Swap-free Accounts do not pay any swap fees for the grace period of 5 days, and they do not gain swap interests too.

4) Currency conversion fees: Whenever you trade a financial instrument that is not paired with the currency of your account, you incur currency conversion fees when you close the trade position.

For example, if your base account currency is USD, and you trade EUR/GBP, any profit or loss you make will be converted to your base account currency and charged a currency conversion fee because the pair you traded is not in the currency of your account.

The currency conversion fee on OANDA is 0.5% of the mid-point price at the time of conversion, applied to the profit or loss realized from the trade.

Here is the trading fess of some popular CFDs that OANDA provides.

Swaps are subjected to change daily. Click here to see the daily updated swap fees.

Non-trading fees

1) Deposit and Withdrawal fees: OANDA charges zero fees for deposits for all payment methods, which means you don’t pay any fees for depositing funds to your trading account on OANDA, although your payment processor may charge an independent fee.

OANDA offers free withdrawals to cards, e-wallets (Skrill & Neteller), and local bank transfers. In contrast, international bank transfers attract a fee of US$20 (SGD 28) per withdrawal.

2) Account Inactivity charges: If you do not perform any trading activity on your account for 12 months, your account will be categorized as inactive and any funds in it will be charged SGD10 each month.

If you do not have any money in your account, you will not accrue a negative balance.

*Only withdrawals via bank transfer incur a fee. If you deposit and withdraw in SGD, there no charges. Your first non-SGD withdrawal within a calendar month attract a US$20 (or equivalent amount in the relevant currency) charge. All subsequent non-SGD withdrawals made within the same calendar month will incur a US$35 (or equivalent amount in the relevant currency) fee.

How to Open OANDA Account in Singapore?

Follow these steps to open a trading account on OANDA.

Step 1) Visit the OANDA Singapore website via www.oanda.com and click ‘See our CFD markets’, on the page that opens, click the ‘Start trading’ or ‘Trade now’ button.

Step 2) Confirm that you live in Singapore, provide your full name and date of birth, select your country of birth, enter your email address, and phone number, then click ‘Confirm and continue’. You can choose to use your SingPass information.

Step 3) Select your citizenship and enter your tax number then click ‘Confirm and continue’.

Step 4) Provide your residential address then click ‘Confirm and continue’.

Step 5) Answer questions about your employment and financial status then click ‘Confirm and continue’.

Step 6) You will be shown a notification stating that your account application request has been received and will be processed. You can then find some FAQs about the platform.

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It takes up to 2 business days for your account to be approved. Until your account is approved, you will be unable to deposit funds, withdraw or trade.

Payment methods supported on OANDA are cards (debit/credit), e-wallets (PayNow, QRPay), and bank transfers (local/international). The bank account or card used to deposit or withdraw funds must have the same name as the name on your trading account. Find an overview of the deposit and withdrawal on OANDA below:

OANDA Deposit Methods

Here is a summary of payment methods accepted by OANDA for deposits.

OANDA Withdrawal Methods

Here is a summary of payment methods for withdrawals accepted on OANDA.

What is the minimum deposit for OANDA?

There is no mandatory minimum deposit on OANDA, you can deposit any amount that you want with any payment method of your choice. You only need to deposit enough to cover the trades you want to place.

Note that to deposit more than $9,000 (SGD 12,500) you will have to provide the required documents for full account verification.

How do I deposit money into OANDA?

Follow these simple steps to deposit funds into your OANDA Account:

Step 1) Log in to your OANDA trading account via www.OANDA.com/account/login.

Step 2) Once your OANDA portal (dashboard) loads, click on the ‘View’ under ‘Manage Funds’ tab.

Step 3) Select ‘Deposit’ and follow the on-screen instructions to add funds to your account.

What is the OANDA Minimum withdrawal?

There is also no compulsory minimum withdrawal on OANDA and you can withdraw any amount, this applies to all payment methods supported for withdrawal on OANDA.

How to Withdraw Funds from OANDA

Follow these simple steps to withdraw money from your OANDA Account:

Step 1) Log in to your OANDA dashboard via www.OANDA.com/account/login.

Step 2) Once your dashboard loads, click on ‘View’ under the ‘Manage Funds’ tab.

Step 3) Select ‘Withdraw’ and follow the on-screen instructions to withdraw funds from your account.

You can trade the following financial instruments on OANDA:

Trading platforms supported by OANDA are:

1) MetaTrader 4: OANDA supports the MT4 trading application which is available on the web, desktop, and mobile devices (Android & iOS).

2) OANDA Trader: OANDA offers trading via a proprietary trading platform developed by OANDA and can be accessed via the web, or desktop or downloaded from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store.

1) TradingView: OANDA also supports the TradingView application which is available only on the web.

OANDA offers 24/7 online customer support to traders via the following channels:

1) Live chat support: OANDA offers live chat support to clients that can be accessed through the support page of their website and is available 24/7.

When our team tested the OANDA live chat, there was no wait time as the agent was connected immediately. When you start the live chat, you will be required to provide your name and email address.

The answers we received to our questions were relevant and we were directed sometimes to some articles that answered our questions.

2) Email support: OANDA also offers email support for traders and is available 24/7 as well. When our team tested the OANDA email support, we got a response 20 minutes later and the answers were relevant.

The OANDA email address for customer support is [email protected].

3) Phone support: OANDA currently offers local phone support for traders in Singapore.

Do we Recommend OANDA Singapore?

OANDA is regulated in multiple jurisdictions by Top-Tier financial regulators, and the broker is obligated to take measures to protect client funds based on the various regulations.

Further, OANDA is locally regulated in Singapore by the MAS which means that they follow Singapore laws and regulations and are subject to the same.

OANDA offers several account types to traders with commission-free trading to provide access to both beginners and experienced traders. You can also use the demo account option to learn more about the platform and trading in general.

Fees on OANDA are moderate, as they offer spread-only trading accounts with zero commission for opening and closing trade positions, the spreads are also competitive, they only charge deposit fees on PayPal, while payment methods for deposit and withdrawals are free of charge.

A downside to OANDA Singapore is that they do not have negative balance protection, which means that if a trade position results in a loss, you can lose more than the money deposited into your account and will be required to deposit more money to clear the negative balance. They charge currency conversion fees and dormant account fees after 1 year, although you can avoid the dormant account charges if you have no funds in the account.

The customer support is responsive and available 24/7. The website is informative although the account registration process is easy, it takes longer for your account application to be approved.

Although OANDA offers few tradable instruments, you can check out the broker’s website and probably chat with the live support to help decide if you want to trade on the platform.

OANDA Singapore FAQs