IC Markets Sign-In From Pakistan: Three Machines, Three Cities
The portal, the MetaTrader servers and the cTrader servers each authenticate separately and sit in different time zones. Work out which one refused you before resetting anything.
Open IC Markets Account →Three different machines answer when you sign in to this broker, and they are in three different places. The Secure Client Portal at secure.ic.com takes a registered email and a password and handles administration. MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 take a numbered trading account, its own password and a server string, and the machines behind them sit in Equinix NY4 in New York. cTrader takes the same three kinds of value but points at London.
Why that matters from Karachi
PKT is a flat UTC+5, New York is nine to ten hours behind it and London four to five, so the three sessions you are signing in to do not share a calendar day. A trade opened at 23:00 PKT is already tomorrow on your phone and still today on a New York server, which is the ordinary reason a statement looks a day out of step.
The layer above all three
None of the sign-in mechanics are Pakistan-specific. What is: the counterparty is Raw Trading Ltd of Seychelles under FSA Securities Dealer licence SD018, no Pakistani regulator stands behind that relationship, and SBP EPD Circular Letter No. 08 of 2022 treats funding it as a breach of section 4(1) of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. This page hosts no login form of its own. CFD trading carries a high risk of losing money.
Isolating the sign-in that actually failed
Work down the list rather than across it. Each step rules out one of the three machines, and the error messages they produce are close enough to be useless on their own.
- Start at secure.ic.com with the email address the account was registered under - a trading account number will never open the portal.
- Open the portal on a second device and read off three things at once: the account number, its trading password and the server string printed beside it.
- Paste the server string rather than retyping it; one wrong character produces the identical invalid-account message a wrong password gives, and the two are impossible to tell apart from the error alone.
- Before resetting anything, write down which credential you are resetting - the portal password and each trading password are separate values that never move together.
Which password a reset really changed
The portal credential and each trading-account credential are separate values held on separate systems, so resetting one leaves the others untouched. A run of failed attempts can also lock a session for a while, which looks identical to a wrong password from the outside.
The offset that makes a statement look wrong
PKT is a flat UTC+5 and never moves. The MetaTrader servers in Equinix NY4 sit nine hours behind you in the American summer and ten in the winter; the cTrader servers in London sit four to five hours behind. A position opened at 23:00 in Karachi is therefore stamped on the previous calendar day by a New York server, and its overnight holding fee is charged at that server's midnight - somewhere near 09:00 to 10:00 PKT, mid-morning here. Nothing is broken when a statement disagrees with your phone by a day; two clocks are simply doing what they were set to do.
The sign-in mechanics are the same for every client of this broker anywhere. What is specific to Pakistan sits one layer up: the account is held by Raw Trading Ltd of Seychelles under FSA Securities Dealer licence SD018, no Pakistani regulator licenses that relationship, and SBP EPD Circular Letter No. 08 of 2022 treats funding it as a breach of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act.
Why the portal and the terminal behave like strangers
The portal is the administrative half of the relationship: deposits, withdrawals, new accounts, base currency and platform downloads all live there, and it knows you by the email you registered with. The terminals are the trading half, and they authenticate a numbered account against a named server instead. A portal sign-in that works therefore proves nothing at all about a terminal.
One false alarm follows from that split more often than any other: the portal password is reset, the portal opens, MetaTrader keeps refusing, and the account looks broken. Nothing is broken. The reset touched the portal credential and left every trading password exactly where it was.
What login does not change for a reader in Pakistan
Sign-in works the same way for every client of this broker anywhere on earth. Pakistan changes what sits above it. The client agreement names Raw Trading Ltd of Seychelles as counterparty, there is no Pakistani licence because there is no Pakistani retail forex or CFD regime to issue one, and SBP EPD Circular Letter No. 08 of 2022 treats remitting funds to an offshore CFD platform as a breach of section 4(1) of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act while instructing banks to identify and block such payments. None of that alters a password reset. All of it is worth reading before the login screen becomes the only thing on your mind.
Matching the refusal to the machine that produced it
| Sign-in | Credentials it expects | What the failure looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Secure Client Portal | The email you registered with, plus its password | The portal page itself rejects the email or the password |
| MetaTrader 4 / 5 | Trading account number + password + server | Invalid account, or the terminal simply never connects |
| cTrader | Account number, trading password and a server string pointing at New York | Invalid account, or the terminal simply never connects |
| IC mobile app | Whichever of the two credential sets you gave it | The sign-in loops, or it connects and shows no accounts at all |
Both the account number and the server string are printed in the portal, and neither terminal will connect on one without the other - a mistyped server line is the single most common cause of an invalid-account message.
Details an agent will read back to you
| Detail | IC Markets |
|---|---|
| Minimum deposit | USD 0 across the three main accounts; the balance itself is held in one of ten base currencies, PKR excluded |
| Maximum leverage | Banded from 1:5000 downwards on MetaTrader as size grows; a flat 1:1000 on cTrader |
| Tradable instruments | 2,250+ via MetaTrader and 121 via cTrader, with 90+ named on the Swap Free table |
| Account types | Raw Spread, cTrader Raw Spread and Standard, each available with Swap Free |
| Platforms | MetaTrader 4 and 5 answering to New York, cTrader and TradingView to London |
| Execution | No dealing desk sits in the middle; institutional pricing is passed through |
| Support | Every hour of every day, in English, with no Pakistan office or Urdu line advertised |
| Pakistan-specific licence | None, and no Pakistani regime exists to grant one; SBP EPD Circular Letter No. 08 of 2022 tells banks to block payments to offshore CFD platforms |
The figures an agent will read back to you, taken from the brand pages on 2 September 2026. Leverage means a high risk of losing money.
The pricing your statement ought to be showing
| Account | Spread from | Commission | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raw Spread | 0.0 pips | USD 3.50 per side | MetaTrader pricing at USD 7.00 the round turn, Swap Free offered, nothing needed to open |
| cTrader Raw Spread | 0.0 pips | USD 3.00 per USD 100,000 | The London side with 121 symbols, Swap Free offered, nothing needed to open |
| Standard | ~0.8 pips | USD 0 | No commission at all, the cost folded into the spread, Swap Free offered |
A statement that matches none of these rows means you are signed in to a different account than you think. Leverage carries a high risk of losing money.