Rakuten Securities Review

1. What is Rakuten?
2. Awards
3. Is Rakuten safe or a scam?
4. Leverage
5. Accounts
6. Market Instruments
7. Fees
8. Deposits and Withdrawals
9. Trading Platform
10. Customer Support
11. Education
12. Conclusion

What is Rakuten?

Rakuten trading name, which is a quite known broker is the division of Rakuten Inc. one of the leading internet services companies with business in e-commerce, travel, banking, securities, e-money, marketing and more.

Rakuten Group is expanding globally and currently performs operations throughout Asia, Europe, the Americas and Oceania.

The company headquarters located in Tokyo, Japan while branching out into Hong Kong, Malaysia and Australia. While the financial services Rakuten Securities launched in 1999 since then its grown involved into a large brokerage firm with a comprehensive range of trading opportunities and available assets.

Is Rakuten a good broker?

Ever since and until now, Rakuten is one of the major online brokers in Japan and across Asia servicing over 2.6 million clients. Also, the company continuously enhances its structure and include even more possibilities to offer and greater option for investors, which is always a benefit. Thus in 2016, the broker partnered with FXCM while further acquired FXCM Asia ltd.

Awards

Rakuten now serves as a global broker, with great international recognition, numerous awards and achievements, as well as well recognized for its sponsorships and social programs it performs, being a partner in Sports and Entertainment. Alike you can see Rakuten name on the t-shirts of the famous FC Barcelona as Rakuten is an honored main Global partner of the team.

Is Rakuten safe or a scam?

For the regulation and licenses, Rakuten is heavily regulated by various authorities due to its branches and global offices.

Is Rakuten legit?

Yes, Rakuten is fully legit, regulated and authorized for all the businesses it does and offers around the world.

The head office of the Rakuten Securities responsible for trading activity and proposal is located in Japan while authorized by the local Financial Services Agency (FSA Japan) while also is a member of the Financial Futures Association and the Commodity Futures Association.

Hong Kong branch RSHK authorized and regulated by SFC, while Australian entity RSA, regulated by the respected ASIC. In addition, the Malaysian branch restricted by the Securities Commission Malaysia and holds Capital Markets Services License (CMSL).

How are you protected?

The above-mentioned range of regulations and authorizations ensures Broker’s reliability and that the operations handled according to the set regulatory requirements. This ensures the trusted investment solution, while clients are protected in multiple ways with money segregation rules and other control that are audited by the authorities so you’re getting transparent conditions.

Rakuten entity	Regulation and License
Rakuten Securities Japan	Authorized by FSA (Japan)
Rakuten Securities Australia Pty Ltd	Authorized by ASIC (Australia) registration no. AFSL No. 418036
Rakuten Securities Hong Kong Limited	Authorized by SFC (Hong Kong)registration no. AIM232
Rakuten Trade	Authorized by CMSL (Malaysia)

Leverage

Being an international broker that serves in various entities and respectively regulated by local authorities, various branches of Rakuten may offer different levels of leverage.

• While Japanese and Australian entities of Rakuten still offer a quite high leverage level up to 1:500 on Forex,
• The other international branches may maximum allow 1:100 on Forex major pairs.

Of course, leverage offers a great benefit opportunity, yet, make sure to learn deeply about leverage and how to use it smartly, as a leveraged or increased trading size may pay a significant role in your either potential income or losses as well.

Accounts

Account types

Rakuten Securities through its diverse branches establish vast opportunities to invest and covers the need of different traders and clients.

So in order not to confuse your possibilities, check over the applicable entity the account type you can be handled with, since the conditions and offers may vary from one regulation to another.

We will see here as a reference of Rakuten Review the Australian offering, where two account types are available including Standard Account and High Leverage Account. The conditions are similar while the difference is about the maximum allowed leverage, spread and maximum allowed lots.

Instruments

The products range as we find through our Rakuten Review including equities, commodities, bonds, investment trusts, ETFs and FX, CFDs.

Fees

Overall, Rakuten uses pricing technology directly from the Tokyo platform, since this option allows to leverage the larger orders and present better prices to the global markets.

Forex Fees

For the trading costs, the broker does not charge any commission on the spreads, while the spread in 95% is fixed during regular working hours and the rest 5% may vary due to the low liquidity reason.

Also, as we saw via the Australian proposal there are two accounts with Standard EUR USD 0.5 pipsand High leverage conditions EUR USD 0.8 pips, where the last one will offer a slightly higher spread, yet remain competitive as we compare to other market proposals.

The comparison on typical Rakuten spreads you may see below, also see a snapshot of the differences between Standard and High leverage spreads, likewise you can check out and compare offered fees with another popular broker Plus500.

Payment Methods

As a Rakuten client, you can choose and fund a trading account with different currencies, typically AUD, USD, EUR and GBP, while you still can select which base currency to utilize and even have multiple accounts.

Deposit Options

There widely supported methods and payment options that may be different due to regions as well, yet typically include

• domestic and international bank wire transfers,
• e-wallets option Neteller, Skrill, ChinaUnion Pay,
• Credit or Debit cards, Amex,
• along with Bitcoin via the e-wallets.

What is the minimum deposit for Rakuten

The minimum deposits at Rakuten are set to a small as 50$, thus the trader of any size may involve into trading with Rakuten at ease. Nevertheless, consult with the broker in order to cover all necessary margins according to the trading instrument you working with.

There are no fees for deposits made by domestic transfers, however, banks may charge international transaction fees for other payment options.

Withdrawals

The withdrawals are processed through the same methods while the withdrawal fee will vary from one method to another, e.g. Neteller and Skrill will add on a 2% fee.  Nevertheless, check funding methods with your Rakuten entity, as various regions may apply slightly different conditions on payments.

Trading Platforms

The branched nature of Rakuten delivers various platforms to their clients that may incur some differences between the entities as well.

Desktop Platform

The Australia Rakuten offers as a trading platform the industry known MetaTrader4 Platform that besides its powerful performance allows analyzing the price with a slew of charts, technical tools and a highly customizable interface and modular approach.

Another platform solution is the Rakuten FX trading platform that delivers offering to the Hong Kong entities is an easy-to-use software with robust functionality, while its AS Streaming trading function performs speedy order execution with lower trading costs through the tight fixed spread and no extra cost.

Web Trading

The investment defined at pre-set preferred trading lot size, auto copy notification, real-time account reports also available via desktop, web and mobile platforms so supporting all the devices.

The Malaysian offering includes also access to the market platform via iSPEED.my app or web-based trading screen that provides with a more efficient way to manage trading activities from the online account.

Mobile Platform

Mobile platform features Support for Android, Support for iOS, Full Set of Trading Orders, Analysis and Technical Indicators.

Customer Support

The customer support available around the clock also supporting live chat, phone lines and reachable through various sources including WhatsApp making communication easily accessible. Besides, Rakuten gained a good ranking among other brokers for its quality customer service, which is another plus to its proposal.

Education

The beginning traders or even seasoned ones are also supported with the educational resources and materials, including powerful technical analysis support coverage of important topics via the Education courses, regularly held Webinars and videos also done in various languages making learning better.

For practice trading in risk free Demo Account you can sign up for free at any time and test strategy or Rakuten conditions.

Conclusion

The Rakuten Review is about the broker that operates and provides professional services, while constantly improving their offering. The Japan-based head company diversified its portfolio to a wide offering through the range of branches that are also highly regulated, thus deliver secure trading environment.

The overall proposal to the investors and traders indeed very comprehensive by the number of account types, fixed or floating spreads, trading platforms and availability of progressive tools. While all in all concludes Rakuten as a reliable and very attractive broker to trade with.

The only thing you should be attentive with is to check the relevant information due to his own country of residence and under which branch the client will be trading, as the conditions may be slightly different.

Nevertheless, we would be glad to know your personal opinion about Rakuten,  share your experience in the comment area below or ask us for some additional information if necessary.