CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Excess volatility increases risk further. Be cautious. Past performance is not an indication of future results.
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Follow the money, not the chart

Five places your money can be, and who is holding it there (South Africa)

Money in an online trading account is never in one place for long. It sits in a bank, moves through a payment provider, lands as a balance, gets held against an open position, and eventually travels back the way it came. Each stop has a different keeper, a different screen and a different set of rules. This guide follows that route — the charts and strategies are elsewhere: currency pairs, CFDs and the word list are one click away.

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This site is an independent guide that writes about the broker and does not speak for it. Accounts, balances and payments live on the official Exness website, never here. CFDs are complex instruments and trading may not be suitable for everyone.

The short version. An account is a file about a person before it is a place for money. An email confirmed by a six-digit code, a phone number confirmed, a government-issued photo ID and a proof of residential address are what attach a name to it, and that check normally clears in about a day. From then on the name governs everything: whose payments the account accepts, whose account the money can go back to, and who a support desk is allowed to talk to about it. Nothing on this site can see, hold or move any of it — the screens described here all live inside the broker's own account area.

The route

The five stops, and what changes hands at each

Read this as a map rather than a warning list. Most confusion about a missing amount is really confusion about which stop it is standing at.

The middle two stops are the ones nobody watches — and where money spends the most time.
Stop Who is holding it Where you read its state
1. Still yours, outside Your own bank or payment account, in rand Your bank statement — nothing here appears on any trading screen
2. In transit, in The payment provider carrying it, which also handles any currency conversion The transaction entry in your Exness account area, with its own reference
3. Credited and free Held on the trading account in your name, in the account's own currency The free-margin figure on the trading platform
4. Held against a position Still yours, set aside as margin while a trade stays open — not spent, not paid to anyone The used-margin line, next to the floating result
5. On the way back out Released by the broker, then carried by the same provider it arrived through The withdrawal request, then your bank statement again

Balance, equity, free margin, used margin — which pot each word counts

The file that opens the gates

Three confirmations, and what each one releases

An account is not one switch but a small file that fills up in stages. Knowing which stage you are at explains most of what a screen will and will not let you do.

The email and the phone

Registration takes a few minutes. A six-digit code confirms the email address, and the phone number is confirmed as well. Until that is done the file has nobody attached to it, and the contact details are what every later message about money is sent to.

The order of the stages

The photo document

A government-issued photo ID — passport, national ID or driver's licence — attaches a person to the account. This is the step that decides whose name the account is in, and therefore whose payments it will accept and where money is allowed to go back to.

What makes a document usable

The proof of address

A proof of residential address completes the check, which is usually approved within about 24 hours. Verification is the gate before money leaves, so finishing it early costs nothing and finishing it late holds a withdrawal up.

How money goes back out
One person, one file

What the name on the account decides afterwards

A trading account is held in the name that was accepted with the document. That sounds like a formality until you notice how many later answers come straight out of it.

  1. It decides whose payments the account will take

    Money is expected to travel between a person and their own account. A transfer sent from a relative's bank account or a friend's card is not made yours by arriving — it is two different names on the two ends of one movement.

  2. It decides who a support desk may discuss it with

    The desks are open around the clock, and they answer to the file rather than to whoever is typing. That is a protection, not an obstacle: it is the same rule that stops somebody else asking questions about your balance.

  3. It survives every account you open afterwards

    The check sits with the profile, not with one trading account, so opening another does not restart it. A profile can hold up to 100 MT4 and 100 MT5 accounts, 200 in total, under one login. The one field a later account cannot undo

  4. It costs nothing to settle early

    Registration takes a few minutes and the check is usually approved within about 24 hours. A demo account needs none of it, so the platform can be learned while the documents are being read. What a demo can and cannot rehearse

The record

What to keep a note of, and why it saves an afternoon

Every stop on the route leaves a trace somewhere, but the traces live in different systems, and only you sit in front of all of them. Four items per movement are enough, written the day it happens: the direction, the amount and the currency as it was typed, the date and time shown on the confirmation, and the reference the payment screen displayed. Add which account it belonged to, because a profile can hold many.

That note is what turns a vague question into an answerable one. A message that says money has not arrived gives a support desk nothing to look up; the same message with an amount, a timestamp and a reference points at a single transaction. The desks are open around the clock, with live chat suited to short account questions and email or a support ticket suited to verification and anything document-shaped.

Keep one habit alongside it: passwords never appear in that note. The account area password and the trading platform password are two different passwords, and neither belongs in a message to anyone. Who can see your account, and what they will ask for

Locking the door

Three settings that protect the account itself

Trading risk and account security are separate subjects. These three cost nothing and are set once.

Turn on two-step verification

In the account area, Settings → Security settings → 2-step Verification offers an authenticator app, email or SMS. If the device is ever lost, the security type can be reset back to email, so choosing an app does not lock you out permanently.

Whose name is on the money

Keep the two passwords apart

The account area password signs you in to the place where deposits, withdrawals and settings live. Each trading account has its own separate platform password. Resetting one does not touch the other, and that separation is deliberate.

Questions by where the money is

Ignore anyone who contacts you first

Exness does not contact clients through Telegram, WhatsApp or Facebook to ask for a password or to ask that funds be sent to an address. A message that does either of those is not from the broker, whatever it looks like.

What an account will not let you do yet

Why the middle of the route is where patience goes

Stops 1 and 5 have a bank statement behind them, and stop 3 has a balance on a screen. Stops 2 and 4 have neither, and that is precisely where people conclude something has gone wrong. Money in transit exists as a transaction entry with a state and a reference; money held as margin exists as a line that says a portion of the balance is unavailable. Both are ordinary, both are documented, and neither looks like anything until you know where to find it.

Which is why the habit above matters more than any single fact on this page. A note made when a movement starts turns the quiet middle of the route into something checkable, and turns a support conversation into one exchange rather than four.

The outer edge of what a trade can reach

Everything above is about money moving between keepers. One boundary is worth stating separately, because it defines how far a trading decision can ever reach into the pile:

  • Clients never lose more than they've deposited. The account cannot travel past zero into a debt, so the money still sitting outside — in your own bank, at stop 1 — is out of a trade's reach by construction.
  • Losing the full amount deposited stays entirely possible. CFDs are complex products. Trading is risky and may not be suitable for everyone, and past performance is not an indication of future results.

Which makes the amount you choose to move inwards the one figure that genuinely settles your exposure — not a stop level, not a size, not a forecast. It is decided at stop 1, before any screen on this route has been opened. Which money a trade can actually reach

Before the first payment

Six things settled in advance, once

None of these is urgent and none costs anything. All six are considerably more pleasant to have behind you than in front of you on the day money is wanted back.

  1. The identity file, finished

    A government-issued photo ID and a proof of residential address, uploaded and accepted — usually within about 24 hours. This is the one item with a waiting period in it, so it goes first.

  2. The account currency, chosen deliberately

    It is fixed when the account is created and the creation screen lists the options. Everything on the account is counted in it afterwards, in both directions.

  3. A payment method in your own name

    Money is expected to move between a person and their own account. Sorting this before the first payment avoids a refusal that looks like a fault and is not one.

  4. Two-step verification, switched on

    Settings → Security settings → 2-step Verification, using an authenticator app, email or SMS. Set once, and a lost device is recoverable by resetting the security type to email.

  5. Two passwords, stored as two things

    The account area password and each trading account's platform password are separate by design. Keeping them as one entry is how a working account starts to look broken.

  6. Somewhere to write movements down

    Direction, amount and currency as typed, timestamp, reference, account number. Five fields, one line each. Answers grouped by the screen in front of you

Learn the screens before any money is on them

Where the balance sits, how margin appears, what a closed trade leaves behind — all of it is visible on a free demo account with virtual money, no document and no payment involved.

Open a free demo at Exness