Is Binary Options trading legal in Kenya? – Guide for Kenyan traders

When you talk about emerging financial countries across the globe, most people rarely count Kenya on the list. But the facts are truly convincing, that Kenya is one of the rising financial countries of Africa. It has put up many achievements within the financial arena of Africa and has even gotten recognition across the globe. 

Kenya holds the distinction with a financial inclusion rate of 97%. Hence, this country is one of the advanced countries in Africa. Binary options trading entered Kenya, and people responded to it on a positive note. Even though there are no local brokers, the traders are still relying on offshore brokers for the purpose. 

If you are an aspiring binary options trader in Kenya, then you should learn about its legality and regulations. And this article is a clear explanation for you to learn about the laws, regulations, and other important aspects of binary options trading in Kenya. Apart from that, this guide will also give you the details of the best offshore brokers for you to rely on. 

What are Binary Options?

Binary Options trading is all about predicting one of the two possibilities with the price graph of particular assets. It is one of the easiest and simplest trading formats that has high earning potential. But easy money never comes without risk and patience. Therefore, you need to work on improving your skills to minimize the risk factors. 

For every successful trade, you get a specific profit percentage. The profit percentage varies depending upon the various assets and their liquidity factors. But if you lose, then all of the amounts that you traded will be deducted from your broker account without any compensation. Hence, every trade should be strategic and accurate to minimize losses. 

And accuracy is only possible with analysis. Most of the brokers offer indicator tools, market signals, and other such features to help traders determine accurate predictions. But self-analysis skill is the most important requirement for achieving success with binary options trading. 

Are Binary Options legal in Kenya?

Binary options trading in Kenya is completely legal as of now. There is no such consideration or concern regarding this trading format by the authorities of Kenya. All of the financial markets within Kenya are under the governance of the Capital Markets Act. In fact, this proposed law gave Capital Markets Authority (CMA) the power to supervise and regulate the financial market activities. 

In the year 2016, forex trading was at its peak in Kenya, and CMA made a decision to regulate and propose new guidelines for the same. As per SIB (Standard Investment Bank), there were over 50,000 Kenyans involved in forex trading in 2016. And, the authority imposed regulations to streamline this mode of investment or trading and make it safer. 

The CMA did not respond or gave any verdict on binary options trading in Kenya, and it is the same to date. Due to the silence of CMA regarding this trading form, the citizens can conclude it to be an unregulated industry within the country. Hence, the locals are taking privilege of this factor and are relying on offshore brokers for their trading needs. 

But the thing is that not all brokers are legit and reliable! Some produce fake licenses and scam the traders. In fact, CMA is not responsible for any of such losses. Therefore, it is important for the traders to use this country’s legality for binary options trading Kenya in a safe manner to continue this way. You will learn about the right ways of choosing the best & genuine broker further in this article. 

How to trade Binary Options in Kenya?

Kenyan traders have the legal authority to commence with binary options trading in Kenya. But the only available option for them is to rely on offshore brokers. There are many reputed and renowned offshore brokers with genuine regulations that are accepting traders from Kenya. And this is what is helping the traders of this country earn big and contribute towards excelling the country’s economy. 

For choosing the right broker, you will need to consider some of the crucial factors. It is to ensure that you don’t end up losing all your money by trusting a scammer platform. So, the important factors for choosing a genuine broker are:

• Licensing & Regulation

The regulations should be specific to CySEC, IFMRRC, MiFID, and FCA. These regulations come with license numbers that are verifiable on the official websites of those authorities. If you get brokers with these verified licenses, then you can rely upon them. 

• Terms & Conditions

Before you can finalize a broker from your shortlisted names, prefer to check the terms and conditions. Some brokers might have complex terms for their commissions, which will lead you to lose your profit percentage. So, it is better to take a glance at the terms & conditions of a broker platform. 

• Deposit & Withdrawal

The deposit and withdrawal convenience is one of the most crucial consideration factors for the traders to pick the right broker. Deposit and withdrawal options should meet your convenience. Most brokers allow easy deposits while having complex withdrawal options, which disturbs the peace of mind. Therefore, check these options before commencing with the trading aspects. 

• Demo Account

All of the reputed brokers have demo accounts to let beginners get used to the trading format and the platform interface. If you have landed on a platform that doesn’t have a demo account, then you shouldn’t opt for that. Demo accounts come with virtual funds to let you play just like you would do in the live account. 

These are a few of the factors to help you choose the best brokers for your binary options trading in Kenya. Now, you are ready to make your approach towards a complete profit-earning journey with this trading potential. The Kenyan Traders can trade with exotic, minor & major currency pairs, commodities, cryptocurrencies, and a lot more. It completely depends upon what the broker platform has to offer the traders. 

Here are the steps for you to execute binary options trading in Kenya:

1. Sign-up with your broker account after checking their genuineness, as stated above. 
2. Make your deposit for the minimum amount that the broker policies have stated. But, do not immediately get started with live account trading. 
3. Set up the demo account to trade with virtual funds and learn about the process and interface. 
4. When you are confident enough, you can start placing bets over your live trading account. 
5. Select the financial asset for which you want to trade. 
6. Then select the expiry duration and enter the trade amount. You can either go with short trades or long-duration trades, depending upon your strategies and predictions. 
7. Now, choose the prediction of whether the price of your asset will hike or drop within the specified expiry duration. 
8. Now, your trade is placed! To know if your trade was successful or not, you must wait until the expiry period is over. 

And this is the way with which you can easily carry out binary options trading in Kenya without any hassles! 

Brokers and platforms in Kenya

Attain your peace of mind, as the top reputed offshore brokers are readily offering binary options trading services to Kenyan people. Here are the three best platforms for you to rely on. Check the features, services, and bonuses to determine the one that is perfect for your trading needs. 

#1 Expert Option

Expert Option is probably the best broker platform that has a genuine regulation by MiFID, CySEC, MiFID, and IFMRRC. All of these regulations permit Expert Option to offer services for binary options trading in Kenya. The minimum deposit for this platform is $10, while the minimum trading amount is $1. 

You get a mobile application for this platform to make your trades anywhere on the go. The customer support team is very much responsive and deals with almost all trading queries over their platform. Deposit and withdrawal options are vast, which makes it a convenient platform for both beginners as well as professionals. 

In addition to that, you get a demo account to learn the skills and get an idea about the interface before hitting the live account. Moreover, Expert Option is also starting to offer 100% bonuses to the investors when they qualify the conditions. These bonuses will draw more attention from customers, and it is beneficial for the traders. 

#2 IQ Option

IQ Option is operating from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It has been in action since 2013 and has gathered a lot of reputation and traders from different parts of the globe. The minimum deposit and trade amounts are $10 and $1, respectively. 

With IQ Option, you get margin trading features that are not available with most of the other brokers. You also get a mobile application of IQ Option that is compatible with both Android and iOS devices. Irrespective of whether you are a beginner or an expert, IQ Option is an ideal platform for your trading implementations. 

The customer support team is quite responsive to attending to all of the money and trading-related concerns of the Kenyan traders. Also, IQ Option doesn’t limit how long one can use this platform throughout the day for their trading needs. 

#3 Pocket Option

Pocket Option is also operating under the regulations of MiFID, CySEC, and FCA. It doesn’t have the regulation of IFMRRC, but all of the other regulations are verified and genuine. It is still a strong considerable option, as the deposit bonus over this platform is truly tempting. 

With a minimum deposit of $50, you can get a deposit bonus of 50%. The higher the deposit beyond $50, the higher the bonus will be. As the deposit amount is high, you should not conclude the trading amount to be high as well. You can trade with a minimum amount of $1, and that is what makes it a profitable platform. 

You get the mobile application to implement your trading skills without the barrier of time and location. Pocket Option has a clean and intuitive interface for beginners to get used to it without much hassle. 

Regulations in Kenya

There are no such regulations in Kenya for trading binary options. This is the country that doesn’t even put up warnings of risk factors for the traders. It is because they have deviated their attention from this factor completely. CMA is utilizing its power to regulate all of the other financial activities around the country. 

A draft proposal was made to CMA for amending the laws over Capital Markets Act for binary options trading. But CMA refused the same and omitted the proposal. Hence, Kenya is not regulating binary options trading within the country by any means. No financial authority or bank within the country intends to restrict locals or traders from leveraging the potential of this trading form. 

And with this relaxation, Kenyan traders have open accounts that permit them to trade with offshore brokers. Moreover, they have no such hassle in carrying out transactions to/from the broker accounts. There might be some financial controls being planned in the pipeline by the Kenyan Central Bank for the overseas remittances. But there is no such verdict for the same! 

Therefore, you can count on Kenya as a no-prohibition country for binary options trading. If you are a Kenyan trading aspirant, then you can go ahead with binary options trading Kenya. But the Forex market has some very strict and clear rules & regulations. So, if you want to combine your trading practices with forex, prefer going through its specific regulations within the country. 

Education for Kenyan traders

The Kenyan traders need to learn some basic guidelines to refine their approach towards trading binary options. This section is mostly for beginner traders, as professionals are well-versed with the right point of approach. The beginners should always have clarity on what they are investing in. They should not blindly get into the broker platform and place their trades to end up losing or winning by luck. 

It is evident that binary options trading in Kenya is an easy trading format. But, you will need a basic understanding to leverage its potential. You cannot just expect things to fall on track right from the beginning. You need to learn to keep trying without many failures. And that is why you need to understand the importance of the right point of approach. Hence, here are a few of the things that Kenyan traders need to understand and implement:

1. Never deposit a big chunk of money right from the beginning, with an expectation to trade big and earn big. You should always deposit a small amount for a considerable amount of time until you believe that the broker platform is genuine. It is because there are many cases where the traders deposit a big initial amount over a broker platform, and then the account crashes. The scammers take away your money! So, deposit the minimum required amount. Do not fall for the brokers that have too high minimum deposit requirements without proper licensing. They are probably the suspicious ones! 
2. Get a brief understanding of some of the common assets that you intend to trade with. Stay updated with their market news or information that you think can change the price rate. Keeping those updates in hand, you will have a leading edge in making accurate predictions. You don’t have to stay updated with the news of all of the assets, but only the ones you prefer to trade with. 
3. Make sure that the expiry duration you choose is ideally set for the prediction. It is because if your predicted hike or drop takes place before or after the expiry duration, it doesn’t count. So, be pretty much concerned about whether you choose a short & tight expiry window or a wide and long-term expiry window. 
4. As a beginner, you should always place your first initial trades for a month or two, with a minimum amount, as per the broker’s policy. With most of the brokers, the minimum trading amount is $1. There is a high possibility that you will fail the initial trades, as you lack experience in analyzing the market. Therefore, it is better to lose a small chunk of money and understand the mistakes with it. You can eventually trade big when you gain confidence in an asset’s price fluctuation pattern. 

Hence, these are just a few things to clarify the point of approach for beginners, to begin with, binary options trading in Kenya. 

Conclusion 

Binary options trading in Kenya is completely legal, and you should ensure your safe trading experience to keep it that way. You would not want to give scammers the chance to do fraud with you! Therefore, choose the right broker platform with the ideal considerations that are stated above. Start your safe journey of binary options trading, and earn your fortune! 

 FAQ – The most asked questions about Binary Options Kenya : 

Last Updated on February 25, 2023 by Andre Witzel