ACY Securities Review Australia 2026

Is ACY Securities safe? ASIC AFSL 403863

Is ACY Securities safe? ACY Securities Pty Ltd holds ASIC AFSL 403863, current since 11 July 2011, and shows no material ASIC enforcement action against the Australian entity in the last 36 months, giving you a clean regulatory record.

ASIC regulation and the offshore entity

Checking the ASIC register shows ACY Securities Pty Ltd holds AFSL 403863, and you can verify the licence status in under a minute. The licence register lists Synergy Financial Markets Pty Ltd as the former name on the same entry.

The group also operates ACY Capital LLC in St Vincent and the Grenadines, used for international clients seeking higher leverage. The St Vincent and the Grenadines regime does not regulate forex or CFD trading at all, so that entity operates without any of the investor protections applying under ASIC, and money you place there sits outside any regulatory safety net.

This entity distinction is the single most important thing on this page. Before funding an account, confirm which entity is named on the application, because the protections described below only apply to the AFSL entity and stop at the offshore one. Fund the wrong entity and every protection you read about below is lost.

History and ownership

Founded in Sydney in 2011, ACY Securities remains privately held. It grew from an original Australian-Chinese trader base into broader Asia-Pacific markets while keeping the Australian entity as the primary regulated home, so your account sits under the same licence the firm has held for over a decade.

Before depositing, confirm ACY Securities holds AFSL 403863 using the site's guide to checking a broker on ASIC's register.

ACY Securities client money protection and the offshore entity

ACY Securities provides client money protection under AFSL 403863, with all client money in segregated accounts at an Approved Australian Bank. None of it reaches the unregulated St Vincent and the Grenadines entity.

That segregation means your trading funds are held apart from the company’s own money.

On the Australian entity, client money is held separately from company funds, so your deposit is not used to run the business. ASIC’s negative balance protection ensures a retail CFD account cannot lose more than the money in it. AFCA can hear claims up to A$1,263,000 and award up to A$631,500. The Compensation Scheme of Last Resort caps payments at A$150,000, but it covers only personal advice, securities dealing and credit, so forex and CFD trading sit outside it. The retail standard is detailed in our guide to negative balance protection at AU brokers.

All those protections stem from the licence entity. A client routed to ACY Capital LLC has no AFCA access, no segregation requirement, no negative balance protection and no compensation scheme, because St Vincent and the Grenadines imposes none of them. Your only recourse on that entity is the company’s goodwill.

The two entities share a brand and a website, which is why the distinction matters for account choice. The onshore Experienced Trader account is the route to higher leverage that keeps the protections in place, so you do not need to sacrifice safety for leverage.

Public reviews

ACY Securities holds a Trustpilot rating of 4.4 out of 5 from 704 reviews, which Trustpilot labels excellent, captured September 2026. The profile has been claimed by the broker since August 2018.

Third-party rating panels show the public scores for this broker across regional pages. Recurring praise mentions the bilingual desk responsiveness, Pro Zero pricing and MetaTrader stability. Recurring complaints highlight withdrawal verification delays on a first request, and confusion among new traders about which entity they are onboarding to, a confusion that, in my view, can put your protections at risk.

How popular is ACY Securities in Australia?

ACY Securities sits in the lower half for search interest, 17th of 32 on 1,220 branded searches in August 2026. Search interest measures attention, not quality; the score above is the review verdict.

17of 32Search interest rank

1,220

Brand searches, August 2026

+22.0%

vs July 2026

30

Login searches

0.7%

Share of all broker searches

Source: Google search volume, Australia, August 2026. How this is measured

What other review sites say

ACY Securities' iOS app rates 4.50 out of 5 from 8 ratings on the Australian App Store (September 2026), listed as ACY Securities APP.

App Store AU

4.50

8 ratingsSeptember 2026

ACY Securities at a glance: 17 key facts

ACY Securities Pty Ltd holds ASIC AFSL 403863, current since 11 July 2011, and runs three platforms with a US$200 minimum deposit.

In the table below, 17 key facts cover the entity, the offshore arm and the fee schedule, so the full regulatory and cost picture is visible before opening an account.

That table deliberately shows two currencies. The minimum deposit is in US dollars, while commission is billed in the account currency, so an AUD account pays A$1.50 a side and avoids a currency conversion on every trade. For your AUD funding, that means the US$200 minimum converts only once and the per-trade commission has no extra conversion cost.

ACY Securities Pro Zero pricing, measured

In our September 2026 capture, our measurement of ACY Securities Pro Zero pricing showed 0.16 pips on EUR/USD and 0.55 pips across the eight-pair basket, with A$3.00 round-turn commission per standard lot on forex and metals.

That per-side commission ranks as the cheapest of any broker in the lowest commission forex brokers comparison. Yet the 0.55 pip basket average in our September 2026 capture lands Pro Zero ninth tightest of the 11 raw accounts in the lowest spread brokers in Australia test, so the win is pair-specific and your all-in cost depends on the pairs traded.

In July 2026, ACY Securities confirmed to us that Australian clients are billed in their account currency, so an AUD-funded account pays A$1.50 a side, not the US dollar rate on the global site. Indices and crypto CFDs trade commission-free on Pro Zero, which lowers the cost on those asset classes to the spread alone. For your account, that removes both conversion and commission on those trades.

The Standard account is not available here

The Standard account prices spread-only from 1.0 pip on EUR/USD, but ACY Securities offers it only through offshore entities, not under AFSL 403863. There’s no spread-only option on the Australian licence, so the only practical path is Pro Zero raw spread plus commission, and your account type is effectively decided.

What it costs to trade with ACY Securities

ACY Securities charges a round-turn commission of A$3.00 on Pro Zero, and the all-in cost to trade with ACY Securities on EUR/USD is 0.37 pips per standard lot.

The measured 0.16 pip spread comes from our September 2026 capture, and at the A$14.04 pip value per standard lot that capture read from its own terminals, the commission is 0.21 pips.

Across the eight pairs, the 0.55 pip average sits ninth on spread alone in our September 2026 capture, well behind Fusion Markets at 0.09. Since the raw spread plus commission pricing makes the headline spread only half the cost, the commission here is the cheapest half in this coverage, and once the A$3.00 round turn is added your all-in cost of 0.80 pips ranks fourth in the lowest spread comparison’s all-in table.

Other fees AU traders should check

• Overnight swap rates apply on positions held past 5 PM New York time, direction-dependent and worth checking against a typical holding period.
• Currency conversion applies to positions denominated outside the account base currency.
• Withdrawals cost A$0 on most methods, though bank transfers may attract intermediary fees from the receiving bank.
• No inactivity fee applies at any balance or duration.

ACY Securities funding methods and withdrawal times

Funding methods for Australian clients at ACY Securities number four, all at A$0, from instant card payments to bank transfer in one to two business days.

Deposit methods (AU clients)

Four funding methods is a narrow menu compared to the nine at ThinkMarkets. Crypto deposits are excluded for Australian entity clients, and BPAY is missing, which, in my view, is a real gap if your payment habits rely on BPAY. PayID is the fastest local route and the one to use if speed matters.

The card minimum is A$278, not A$200

Card deposits at ACY Securities have a floor of A$278 per transaction, which is not the figure anything on the way in prepares you for, and I would rather have met it on the deposit page than in a red error. Noam typed 200 into the Visa and Mastercard form on the newly approved account and the portal refused it, in red, with the line “For each transaction, the minimum amount is 278 AUD”.

Switching currency does not move it, which is the part I would query before funding. The form offers USD, AUD, EUR, GBP, SGD and HKD as the payment currency, and selecting USD left the field labelled Amount (AUD) and the minimum at 278 AUD. Either the floor is enforced in Australian dollars whatever you pick, or the form is mislabelling the currency it is about to take, and the screen does not tell you which.

Past that, funding was the easy half. The A$278 card payment ran through Worldpay, whose order summary also read AUD 278, and the Pro Zero MT5 balance read 278 the moment the payment completed. No pending state, no overnight wait, which is more than I can say for the Fortrade deposit we tracked in August.

Withdrawals

Withdrawals cost A$0 on most methods and must use the same source as deposits where available, due to anti-money-laundering compliance.

Account opening: two applications, not one

Opening an account here means two separate applications, and the first one does not get you a trading account. Noam created the client portal on 14 August 2026 and came back for the live account application on 3 September, which was his own pacing and not a queue ACY imposed, but it is the distinction I would hold on to: a portal login is not account access. Getting that login takes a name, a country of residence, a mobile number, an email and a password. Expect a four-digit email code with a five-minute expiry, and check your spam folder first, because ours went straight there and the clock does not stop while you look.

Some of the portal opens before any live account exists, and more of it than I expected. ACY’s Training area listed its scheduled webinars with working enrolment links behind an unfunded login. Everything else returned a message that a live account was required.

The live account application opens with an identity check that ACY labels a Fast-Track Process, run by the verification provider Veriff: a government-issued document plus a selfie liveness check, continued by QR code, by an SMS link or on the device you are already using. Our SMS link took several minutes to arrive, which ACY does warn about. Fast-Track, to my mind, names the first step rather than the process.

Behind Veriff sits a five-stage form: Trading & Employment, Appropriateness, Personal Information, Terms & Conditions and Upload Documents. Stage one asks how much you intend to fund, which platform you want, your funding currency and your employment, income and savings. Australian dollars were available as the funding currency, MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 and the ACY Trading Platform were all offered, and the Account Types control held one option, which I read as the licence doing its job.

Stage two is where ACY separates itself from the field. Its Appropriateness questionnaire asks whether you have placed more than 20 CFD trades in the past three months, whether you hold qualifications or training covering derivatives and leverage, why you want to trade CFDs, whether you are in or heading towards financial hardship, whether you are going through bankruptcy, and whether the money you plan to deposit is needed for living or other expenses. Questions four to six are the ones to pause on, because they ask on the record whether the money is rent money. I would rather answer six awkward questions than never be asked them, and if any of those three answers gives you pause, the questionnaire has done its job.

Documents come last, and ACY wants them uploaded in the portal even though Veriff has already looked at them. Three slots are mandatory: an ID front, an ID back and a proof of address, with a fourth optional slot beside them. A driver’s licence, passport or photo ID covers the first two, and a bank statement or utility bill issued in the previous 90 days covers the third. Budget for three files, not two, and have the address document within its 90-day window before you start.

Approval took 19 hours and 57 minutes on our application, submitted at 14:10 on Thursday 3 September 2026 and verified at 10:07 the next morning. ACY’s submission screen promises processing within 24 business hours, so that result beat the promise comfortably, and it beat 24 clock hours as well. I read one application as one data point rather than a service level, and while it was pending the Account List showed the account as Personal, Pending, regulated by ASIC, with the login greyed out.

Mandarin runs through all of it. ACY offers the application in that language and staffs the verification team with Mandarin-speaking callback support, so the whole of this can be done in a first language other than English.

ACY Securities account types and minimum deposit

For Australian clients, ACY Securities offers only one account type: Pro Zero, with a US$200 minimum deposit. The two cheaper accounts sit with the offshore entities.

The Basic and Standard accounts are tied to the SVG entity, ACY Capital LLC, and the FSCA entity, ACY Securities SA Pty Ltd. The practical safeguard is to check which entity is named on an application before you fund it, because the account name on screen may not match the desired licence.

I find that safeguard easier here than at most brokers, because ACY does not offer you the choice. On the Australian application Noam completed on 3 September 2026, the Account Types control held a single button reading PROZERO, with no second option to select and nothing to misread.

Swap-free and wholesale

Swap-free is an eligibility question, not a pricing one, and the answer for Australians is no. ACY Securities lists swap-free as a feature of the Standard account, not a separate account type, and Standard is unavailable under the Australian licence. Pro Zero has no swap-free option, confirmed with the desk in July 2026, so no swap-free route exists for you on the account available or by application. The only path to avoiding swaps, in my view, is to find a broker that offers swap-free under an Australian licence.

There are two paths to higher leverage. Onshore, the Experienced Trader classification lifts caps to 500:1 for wholesale clients under the ASIC entity, requiring the Corporations Act tests of net assets of at least A$2.5 million or gross income of at least A$250,000 in each of the last two financial years, certified by a qualified accountant. The offshore alternative is unregulated and not recommended, because your funds leave the Australian protections entirely.

Minimum deposit

Minimum deposit for Australians is US$200, in US dollars, not Australian dollars, and it’s the Pro Zero figure. The US$50 Basic and US$100 Standard entries visible on the global site are offshore-entity accounts and are not an option under the Australian licence, so your entry cost under AFSL 403863 is the US$200 figure and nothing lower.

Funding by card, the floor is higher again. Our first attempt at A$200 was refused with a stated per-transaction minimum of A$278, which is the same US$200 converted and then enforced in Australian dollars. I would read that as your real entry cost if a card is how you intend to fund, and see the funding section below for what the currency selector does with it.

ACY Securities trading platforms

Across the three platforms (MT4, MT5 and the proprietary ACY Securities Trading Platform) you get WebTrader browser access for each.

MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5

If running an existing MT4 strategy, the MT4 build connects to Pro Zero pricing and supports the full menu of forex pairs, indices, commodities and gold, so your current setup ports straight across without rework. MT5 carries broader native asset-class coverage across indices, stocks and futures, on the same Pro Zero pricing, with a cleaner depth-of-market view that provides a sharper read on liquidity.

ACY Trading Platform (proprietary)

The ACY Trading Platform is the in-house web and mobile option, with a clean order ticket, integrated news feed, charting adequate for most retail use, and a Mandarin-language interface that is the real reason Chinese-speaking Australian traders pick it. The platform also carries a built-in guaranteed stop-loss order, which neither MetaTrader build offers here and which caps your downside on a position at a known level.

It doesn’t yet match the depth of the CMC Markets Next Generation build or the cTrader order book, which is why the platform rating sits mid-table. The platform, in my view, suits a trader who would rather not install desktop software and wants a browser-based experience that covers the essentials, so your choice hinges on whether web access outweighs the loss of depth.

Copy trading and mobile

Australian retail clients cannot access the copy trading account, and there’s no social feed like eToro’s, so you have no way to follow or mirror another trader’s positions through this broker. Both MetaTrader platforms ship without a broker-run signal or copy layer on the Australian entity, which counts against this broker for anyone picking on that basis. All three platforms carry mobile apps, and the proprietary app has biometric login on iOS and Android, so the account can be secured with face or fingerprint recognition.

ACY Securities markets and instrument counts

Markets and instrument counts at ACY Securities span seven asset classes, led by 60 plus forex pairs, and the broker publishes a headline count for forex only.

Instrument counts we don’t have are stated explicitly, not estimated. The commodity range runs wider than most Australian brokers of this size, covering gold, silver, oil, gas and softs, and the bond range reaching Australian and global government issues is unusual at this tier, giving you exposure to markets that most similarly sized brokers do not carry.

Share CFDs

For share CFDs, the range includes ASX, NYSE, NASDAQ and the major EU exchanges, but the range is narrower than CMC Markets, IG Markets or Interactive Brokers. Every equity position in the range is a CFD, with no direct ASX share investing at all. I would want direct share investing, but it’s not offered; your alternative is a derivative on the share price rather than owning the underlying. The share CFD class is compared in the guide to share CFD ranges.

ACY Securities leverage and margin under ASIC rules

Leverage and margin for retail clients at ACY Securities are capped at 30:1 on major forex pairs on Pro Zero, the only account offered under AFSL 403863.

The ASIC caps set retail CFD leverage: 30:1 on major forex pairs, 20:1 on minor pairs, gold and major indices, 10:1 on commodities other than gold, 5:1 on share CFDs and 2:1 on crypto assets. The caps come from a product intervention order extended to 23 May 2027, so they apply at every ASIC broker rather than at ACY Securities alone, meaning your leverage is the same here as at any other Australian-regulated broker.

Unregulated, the SVG entity advertises higher leverage to international clients, but that route is not one you should use as an Australian retail trader. The onshore Experienced Trader account reaches 500:1 for clients passing the Corporations Act wholesale tests, providing a regulated path to higher leverage for those who qualify.

The retail margin close-out is at 50%. ASIC requires every CFD issuer to close a retail client’s positions once account equity falls below half the total initial margin on all open positions, positions cannot be netted against each other to reduce that figure, and a gapping market can close a position below the 50% level. Your account, in my view, can be closed out faster than expected if the market moves sharply. The leverage mechanics are set out in how CFD leverage works.

ACY Securities customer support

ACY Securities runs customer support 24 hours a day, five days a week on phone, live chat and email, across five languages, with live chat replying in under 90 seconds during Australian and Asian business hours.

I see the language range (English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Korean) as a standout. Few ASIC-regulated brokers run that depth of coverage, and it’s the clearest reason the service rating sits near the top of the categories here.

The language coverage is not a marketing line. The platform itself carries a Mandarin interface, the application form is offered in Mandarin, and the verification team staffs Mandarin-speaking callback support, so the language runs through the whole client journey rather than stopping at the chat window. The entire experience from signup to daily trading can run in Mandarin.

The main negative is the weekend support closure. Pepperstone runs 24/7 and IG Markets offers weekend cover, so a query raised here on a Saturday waits until Monday, and the question sits unanswered while markets reopen.

ACY Securities research, tools and education

Research, tools and education at ACY Securities consist of five components: daily analysis in two languages, an in-platform calendar and news feed, platform guides, webinars and VPS hosting.

• Daily market analysis in English and Mandarin
• Economic calendar and news feed integrated in the ACY Trading Platform
• Trading guides for MT4, MT5 and the ACY Trading Platform
• Webinar series with in-house analysts
• VPS hosting available for active traders

The Mandarin-language research feed is the real draw, and it’s why the education rating sits high. A trader whose first language is not English gets more ground covered here than most Australian brokers offer at any tier, which means learning and analysis keep pace with the market in the trader’s own language.

One of the five research items comes with a condition: VPS hosting is offered to active traders rather than to every funded account, which I would prefer to see available to all. The webinar programme asks for nothing at all. Noam reached its schedule and enrolment links from the client portal on 14 August 2026, three weeks before the live account existed and without a cent on deposit, so you can judge the teaching before you commit to the broker.

What traders say about ACY Securities

Public ratings of ACY Securities from the rating sites that list it, showing the number of reviews or ratings behind each score and the month it was captured.

Rating site	Rating	Based on	Who rated	Captured
Trustpilot	4.4 out of 5	704 reviews	Worldwide	September 2026
App Store	4.50 out of 5	8 ratings	Australia only	September 2026

Each row above is a public rating of ACY Securities taken from a rating site, dated to the month its figure was captured. An App Store rating counts ratings left on Apple's Australian App Store only, while a Trustpilot figure counts reviews and a TradingView figure counts ratings from anywhere in the world. A site with no row has no rating for ACY Securities, withholds it, cannot be matched to ACY Securities with confidence, or we have not captured it yet.

How ACY Securities compares to Pepperstone and Fusion Markets

ACY Securities compares to Pepperstone and Fusion Markets with a round-turn commission of A$3.00 against A$7.00 and A$4.50.

In our September 2026 capture, ACY Securities measured 0.55 pips across the eight-pair basket against 0.09 for Fusion Markets, while Pepperstone’s 0.46 pips comes from our May to June 2026 capture, a different statistic. The comparison is a commission win against a spread and scale loss, so the choice turns on whether trading volume makes the per-trade saving outweigh the wider spread.

The commission advantage is real, and it is the cheapest rate in this coverage. That advantage is undercut by the basket, 0.55 pips and ninth of the 11 raw accounts in the September 2026 capture, so the all-in position depends on the pair.

Pepperstone’s account carries five platforms, a measured execution figure and 24/7 support. Fusion Markets opens at A$0 where this broker asks US$200. The five-language desk and the Mandarin platform are what neither rival matches, so the decision turns on whether language depth matters more than platform range or a lower minimum deposit.

Should you open an ACY Securities account?

ACY Securities suits forex traders on MetaTrader who want the cheapest commission ranked here, at A$1.50 per side on a measured 0.16 pip EUR/USD spread in our September 2026 capture. What I keep coming back to is that the per-trade commission saving holds up even where the spread sits wider than the best raw accounts. Traders who want a spread-only account, copy trading or a swap-free route are served better elsewhere than by an ACY Securities account, because those features are not available under the Australian licence.

Two groups gain clear value from an ACY Securities account. Its per-side commission is the lowest in this coverage, though the spread means the cost per trade is not. Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Korean speakers reach a service depth almost nothing else at this regulatory tier provides, so the trading experience runs in the trader’s language from signup to support.

Two groups should look past an ACY Securities account. The basket average runs 0.55 pips across eight pairs in our September 2026 capture, where Fusion Markets Zero, ranked first of the 11 raw accounts we measured in the same capture, ran 0.09, so the cost on a diversified portfolio of forex pairs runs higher than the best alternatives. The proprietary platform sits below the depth of Next Generation or cTrader, which matters if trading relies on advanced charting or order-book analysis.

In the 2026 scoring, ACY Securities ranks fourteenth among the top forex brokers in Australia. A demo runs Pro Zero pricing, so the live spread and commission environment can be tested before committing funds. The offshore SVG entity should never be the route, and an account should always sit under AFSL 403863.