IC Markets Login From Kenya: Portal vs Trading Terminal
Two sign-ins, two credential sets, and one question that sits above both of them: which of two companies your Kenyan account is actually a contract with.
Open IC Markets Account →IC Markets has two front doors and they authenticate different things. The Secure Client Portal at secure.ic.com takes the email address you registered with and handles administration: deposits, withdrawals, new accounts, platform downloads. MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 5 and cTrader take a numbered trading account, its own separate password and an exact server string, and they handle trading. Confusing the two accounts for most of the sign-in problems people describe. None of that is Kenya-specific - the screens are identical everywhere. What is Kenya-specific sits one step above the login: the broker's registration feed defaults a Kenyan resident to Raw Trading Ltd of the Seychelles, while the Capital Markets Authority register carries IC Markets (KE) Limited under licence 199, and those are two different companies. This is an independent guide with no login form of its own. CFD trading carries a high risk of losing money.
Work out which sign-in is refusing you
- Establish which door refused you. If secure.ic.com rejected an email address, that is the portal. If a terminal said invalid account, that is a trading credential, and the portal password has nothing to do with it.
- For a terminal failure, open the Secure Client Portal on a second device and read three values off it: the trading account number, its password, and the exact server string. Only the portal is authoritative for the server name - the broker publishes where the servers physically sit but not the strings themselves.
- Paste the server string rather than typing it. One wrong character returns the same invalid account message as a wrong password, which is why this failure gets misdiagnosed so often.
- Check you are not signing a demo credential into a live server or the reverse. Demo and live are separate accounts on separate servers even inside the same terminal.
- If you reset a password, name to yourself which one you reset. The portal credential and each trading credential are independent, and repeated failed attempts can lock a session for a while.
- If everything above passes and the terminal still will not connect, check the time. A connection attempt during a weekend Higher Margin Requirement window or outside market hours behaves differently from one during the New York session, which from Nairobi means the evening rather than the working day.
Password resets: which credential you actually changed
Password resets are separate for the Secure Client Portal and for each MetaTrader/cTrader account; repeated failed attempts can lock a session temporarily.
A reader in Kenya signs in through exactly the same portal and terminals as anywhere else. What is Kenya-specific sits one step earlier: the broker's own registration feed defaults a Kenyan resident to Raw Trading Ltd of Seychelles, while a separate CMA-labelled branch and Kenya's own licence No. 199 for IC Markets (KE) Limited also exist on that same feed. Confirm which entity your client agreement names before the login screen is the only thing on your mind.
What each door is actually checking
The portal is the administrative layer. It knows your identity, your verification state, your funding history and which accounts you hold, and it recognises an email address. The terminals are the trading layer. They know nothing about your identity; they check a numbered account against a specific server, which is why a working portal sign-in proves nothing at all about a terminal that will not connect, and why the reverse is equally true.
The most common false alarm follows directly. A trader resets the portal password, the portal opens, MetaTrader still refuses, and the account looks broken. Nothing is broken: the reset touched the portal credential and left the trading password where it was. The second most common is the server string, which people retype from memory rather than copying, and the third is demo-versus-live confusion inside one terminal.
One thing worth noting for Kenya specifically: cTrader authenticates against a server in London while MetaTrader authenticates against one in New York, so a trader holding both is working with two server clocks 5 hours apart, neither of which is EAT.
What login does not change for a reader in Kenya
The sign-in mechanics above are identical for every IC Markets client, wherever they are. What is Kenya-specific sits one level up: the broker's own registration feed defaults a Kenyan resident to Raw Trading Ltd of Seychelles, while a separate CMA-labelled branch and Kenya's own licence No. 199 for IC Markets (KE) Limited also exist on that same feed. None of that changes how a password reset works, but it is worth confirming in writing before the login screen is the only thing on your mind.
Reading the failure message back to its cause
| What you saw | Which door it came from | What it usually means |
|---|---|---|
| The email or password is rejected at secure.ic.com | Secure Client Portal | A portal credential problem only. Your trading accounts are untouched and still work |
| Invalid account in MetaTrader | MT4 or MT5, Equinix NY4 server | Usually a mistyped server string, sometimes a demo credential aimed at a live server |
| No connection in MetaTrader | MT4 or MT5 | Network or the wrong server selected - the credential may be perfectly good |
| Invalid account in cTrader | cTrader, London server | Same causes, but note the server is a different city from MetaTrader's |
| The app signs in but lists no accounts | IC mobile app | Signed into the portal layer without a trading account attached to that view |
The account number and the exact server string both live in the Secure Client Portal, and no terminal will connect without both. A wrong server line is the single most common cause of an invalid-account message, and it looks identical to a wrong password.
Account facts support may ask you to confirm
| Detail | IC Markets |
|---|---|
| Which entity your agreement names | IC Markets (KE) Limited under CMA licence 199, or Raw Trading Ltd of the Seychelles under FSA licence SD018 - the registration feed's default. Confirm in writing |
| Your trading account number | Shown in the Secure Client Portal, not the same thing as your email address |
| Your server string | Also in the portal. MetaTrader servers sit in Equinix NY4, New York; cTrader in London |
| Which platform the account is on | Fixed when the account was opened and not changeable afterwards |
| Account base currency | One of ten, and never KES |
| How the account was funded | Support will ask, because withdrawals must return to the source of the deposit and cannot go to a third party |
| What support cannot do | Answer in Swahili, or point you at a Nairobi office. Neither is advertised |
Published IC Markets terms a support agent will check against your account, checked 2 September 2026. Leverage means a high risk of losing money.
Which pricing your account should be showing
| Account | Spread from | Commission | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raw Spread | From 0.0 pips | USD 3.50 per lot per side | A commission line on every ticket. If your statement shows none, you are not on this account |
| cTrader Raw Spread | From 0.0 pips | USD 3.00 per USD 100,000 | A commission line, and a London server string rather than a New York one |
| Standard | About 0.8 pips | None | No commission line at all - the cost is inside the quote |
If the statement does not match the row for your account, you are signed in to a different account than you think. Leverage carries a high risk of losing money.