Last update: 23 July 2020
12 min read
Non-recommended broker
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Bol Financial review

23 July 2020

This broker was not featured in our 2024 Broker Review Audit. This is because, in the past 12 months, it has failed to pass our initial screening process and is not recommended by our team of experts. As such some of the information found here may be out of date.

We review all brokers to a strict and unique methodology, to ensure that we only promote high quality brands that you can trust. This methodology considers over 200 criteria points, covering the categories of safety, fees, platforms, products, payments and customer support. All brokers are then given a score out of 100. We update this methodology and our recommended reviews yearly, so that you’re only given up to date information.

If a broker has a score less than 80, like this one, we won’t recommend it to you. So that we don’t waste your time, we don’t update these reviews either. We know you don’t want to read a long review of an untrustworthy broker. Instead, you can use the tool below to find a high-scoring broker that accepts clients from your country.

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Bonus

50%

Live support

24/7

Mobile

Yes

Assets

Bonds, Commodities, Cryptocurrencies, Forex, Indices, Shares, ETFs

Website

www.betonline.ag
Other Brokers

Binary options trading is a form of wagering on the direction of the financial markets and has several characteristics that resemble gambling. Although several binary options brokers and companies swear by the authenticity of binary options trading as a viable investment product, there is indeed a gaming aspect to binary options. However, traditional forms of investing in the financial markets can also be considered as a gamble, as it is virtually impossible to predict the future accurately. Regardless, binary options brokers rarely inform their clients about the potential for the market to have gambling traits and induce a high-risk trading environment.

BOL Financial, with its gambling services under the BetOnline franchise, is not shy of embracing binary options trading as a gaming product. BetOnline offers access to the financial markets through a dedicated gambling platform and provides all the necessary trading tools for trading binary options like a pro. Read our extended BOL Financial binary options review to learn more.

BOL Financial Regulation

BetOnline is an online gaming portal that is based out of Panama City, Panama. The company has been around since 1991, but is quite new to the binary options industry, having introduced the product since its rise in global popularity during 2008. BOL Financial is only an integral part of the BetOnline’s services portfolio and is not an independent entity. The most intriguing aspect of the company is that traders are granted access to financial products alongside all the other gaming products such as online poker, live casino, and sports betting through a single account. Therefore, BOL Financial traders receive the same treatment from the company as is reserved for its other core gambling products.

Panama is not especially popular among investors in the global financial markets due to its regulatory status. Panama is often termed as one of the most attractive safe havens for wealthy individuals and corporations, which also gives a pretty good incentive for gambling companies to take advantage of the low-cost business environment and enjoy tax benefits. A significant lack of regulation is considered to be a worrying factor for serious investors, as it is vital for traders to bank on the reputation of a reliable and genuine regulatory organisation.

In spite of the absence of regulatory protection, BetOnline has been operating in the online gaming industry since 1991, which does present an exciting prospect for investors regarding the authenticity of the company. There may be inconsistencies in the company’s information, especially the absence of an official address, but traders should be able to trust the services offered by BOL Financial.

BOL Financial Assets

BetOnline has based its financial products around the FX and CFD market, which includes assets from Forex, commodities, stocks, and indices market. The company does provide an extensive range of Forex and commodities, but in terms of stocks and indices, the number of financial instruments is slightly limited. The company certainly shines when it comes to offering cryptocurrencies, as BetOnline has provided almost all the cryptocurrencies available in the market. Let us take a look at all the main instruments available through the BOL Financial platform:

Forex: AUD/CAD, AUD/CHF, AUD/JPY, AUD/NZD, AUD/USD, CHF/JPY, EUR/AUD, EUR/CAD, EUR/GBP, EUR/JPY, EUR/USD, GBP/AUD, GBP/CAD, GBP/CHF, GBP/JPY, GBP/USD, NZD/USD, USD/CAD, USD/CHF, USD/JPY, USD/NOK, USD/RUB, USD/SEK

Commodities: Gold, Copper, Silver, Oil

Crypto: Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Factom, Namecoin, Peercoin, Ripple, Dash, Augur

Stocks & Indices: The stocks and indices options appear to change with the trading schedule. Such a move does not allow traders to analyse the different assets from the global markets during off-market hours, or create a portfolio of popular stock options according to their preferences. Hence, the stocks and indices binary options trading from BOL Financial is entirely subjective and can vary according to the time chosen for trading. Regardless, BOL Financial does seem to offer almost all major instruments from around the world.

If traders are not feeling particularly devoted to binary options trading, the company offers additional gaming products such as sports betting, live casino, online casino, horse betting, and live poker. These products are aimed at traders who are comfortable in experimenting with new investment avenues, but gambling is not an assured platform for making consistent profits. In fact, gambling is illegal in several countries, which may prevent traders from opening an account at BetOnline altogether.

BOL Financial Binary Options Products

BetOnline advertises numerous types of binary options products through its gaming platform, which include digital options, touch options, range options, turbo options, one touch options, and 5 sticks options. However, the company only appears to offer the classic high/low options through its digital and turbo products, which offer a maximum payout of 80% on winning trades. The company promises to offer a higher payout of up to 220% for other options, but traders may not be able to find the relevant products under regular market conditions.

Traders can also expect to receive a refund on a losing trade by choosing such an option before opening a position. For instance, the EUR/USD pair offers a maximum payout of 80% for the digital option, but traders can opt for a smaller payout and increase their refund in the case of out-of-the-money trades. The maximum refund available per trade is 20% of the invested amount, which provides a maximum of 60% ROI for an in-the-money option. The lower the refund, the higher a trader can expect to receive per trade. The option of a refund does give additional flexibility for traders in managing their risks and trading capital during large losing streaks.

BOL Financial also makes it easy to trade binary options by stipulating small order position sizes that allow traders to start trading from $1. The maximum trading limit is rather dependent on the trader and the account equity, but there is a $100,000 limit imposed on the overall exposure. BetOnline is primarily a gaming company, and traders cannot expect to invest in binary options trading as they would with a mainstream financial company.

BOL Financial Platforms

BetOnline has developed different platforms for their individual gaming products, and BOL Financial traders can make use of the web trader for their binary options trading needs. The Web Trader appears to be an excellent platform at first glance, but the real trading performance is far from ideal. There are a few teething troubles with the platform that may prevent traders from taking advantage of the clean and feature-rich interface, along with the earlier mentioned problems of the platform not allowing access to the different types of binary options offered to traders.

The online BetOnline Platform can be accessed through the web browser, which is a convenient access point for traders, but the broker also offers a downloadable platform that offers all the different products through a dedicated desktop platform. The desktop platform can provide a more stable trading environment compared to the web trader interface, and is often preferred by desktop users.

The platform has a conventional trading layout, where traders can choose the type of product, the asset, and the time of expiry through the trading dashboard. The platform also offers access to a basic chart with historical data, the wager information, trader insights, and even trading signals. Therefore, BOL Financial has the potential to offer the best trading platform in the industry with access to some of the best tools for binary options trading, but they do need to improve the reliability and performance of the interface to reflect the modern trader requirements in a better way.

BOL Financial Mobile Apps

BetOnline has used its web trading interface for all mobile trading needs, as mobile traders are required to access the mobile version of the platform through their device’s web browser. BetOnline has adopted this responsive platform for all tablet and smartphone users, which the company claims to be much better than an installable platform. Hence, there are not dedicated BOL Financial Mobile trading platforms for iOS, Android, or Windows operating systems. While it may look like a disadvantage for current users, there are various rumours in the industry that point to a complete removal of binary options and gambling apps from iOS stores, with other OS developers looking to follow Apple’s policies for their users.

Opening A BOL Financial Account & Minimum Deposit

A BOL Financial trading account is not only reserved for binary options trading, but it can be used to access any gaming product offered by the company. There are numerous choices of games available for gamers, but there is only a single type of account on offer. Unlike other companies where the minimum deposit amount is dependent on the type of user account, the BetOnline minimum deposit is dependent on the payment method. BetOnline supports different payment methods such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Visa, MasterCard, MoneyOrders, Person to Person, Skrill, Neteller, Bank Wire Transfer, and Cashiers Check. The minimum deposit starts from $10 for payment processors such as Skrill and Neteller, while the minimum deposit increases to $1000 for wire transfer and $1,500 for Cashiers Check.

Credit/Debit card payments require a minimum deposit of $50, while cryptocurrencies have a minimum deposit requirement of $20 worth of coins according to the existing exchange rates. The company does specify a few maximum deposit limits for some payment options, but the ceiling is removed for Skrill, Neteller, and Bank wire transfer, thereby allowing unlimited deposits.

However, withdrawing is an entirely different prospect at BOL Financial. The company does not allow its users to withdraw to their credit/debit cards but has added MoneyGram payment as an option. The minimum withdrawal amount is $20 for the cryptocurrencies, while the e-wallets such as Skrill and Neteller have a minimum withdrawal limit of $25. The company has also enforced a maximum withdrawal limit, which is strange, considering that there aren’t any upper limits on deposits for e-wallets or bank wire transfers. Traders can only withdraw a maximum of $9,900 through e-wallets and cryptocurrencies, while bank transfers have a maximum limit of $24,900. Traders will have to make multiple withdrawal requests, which can result in higher fees.

Despite the unorthodox withdrawal conditions, the minimum deposit requirements do favour smaller traders. $10 cannot guarantee a profitable trading experience for all traders, but it still provides a good chance for the trader to invest in the markets through a live trading account without worrying about losing a massive amount of money in the markets.

BOL Financial Bonus

With a background in gambling and betting, BetOnline is able to offer excellent bonuses for its clients, which includes deposit bonuses, free play credits, loyalty points, and cash prizes. The $25 free play account is useful for traders to trade the markets without risking their capital in the markets, while the 100% deposit bonus is one of the best bonus packages available in the binary options market. The loyalty bonuses and other cash rewards can offer traders with the perfect opportunity to invest in binary options products, or even indulge in a bit of gambling or betting products to experience the excitement.

BOL Financial Demo Accounts

First of all, BetOnline is a gaming company, and traders cannot expect to treat BOL Financial as an alternate financial broker. Therefore, the company does not offer a demo account to its traders, which seems to be a common strategy adopted by several leading binary options companies in the market. There is a free play $25 account that can be used to trade the markets under live trading conditions, or traders can also use the live online platform walkthrough for a demo that helps traders to go through all the different features and functionalities of the trading platforms. Traders shouldn’t be really concerned about the lack of demo account at BetOnline, as they at least provide a $25 free play account, unlike other brokers who don’t offer any virtual trading account for their traders’ convenience.

BOL Financial Customer Support Department

BOL Financial is not what one would expect to be proficient in its customer service channels, and true to the world, the company only offers a phone number and a couple of email addresses to its traders for official correspondence. Despite the 24X7 customer service access, the website does not provide any information on the official contact information or the company representatives who are responsible for maintaining BetOnline. However, BetOnline maintains an extensive social network, where traders can interact with the company’s employees through Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, which should provide a speedy response to traders’ concerns.

BOL Financial Resources

BOL Financial is a pretty basic binary options package, which does not provide any news or analysis of the markets. The platform provides a trading signals section, but it does not provide any expert assistance for traders while investing in binary options. BetOnline is only concerned about maintaining a gaming portal and is not really committed to traders’ success, as the company depends on its traders’ losses for their company profits. Therefore, it would be futile to expect BOL Financial to provide any expert trading assistance.

BOL Financial Verdict

Pros

  • Access to gaming products, including casinos, betting, and other gambling products.
  • Free play credits and excellent bonuses offered to traders.
  • Low initial deposit.
  • Minimum investment starts from $1.
  • Access to major financial markets across the world.

Cons

  • Gambling background can also be unsuitable for serious binary options investors.
  • Not a regulated company.
  • The platform has a few reliability concerns.
  • Sub-par customer service.

FAQ

How To Open An Account?

Traders can open an account by signing up with an email address through the official signup page. Traders will be required to submit identifying documents to verify the authenticity of the traders.

Is BOL Financial A Scam?

Although BetOnline is not a regulated company, there haven’t been any reports of scam activities.

What Is The Minimum Deposit Amount?

The minimum deposit for an account is $10.

Does BOL Financial Support Mobile Binary Options Trading?

Yes, mobile trading is enabled through the web trading interface offered by BOL Financial. There are no dedicated mobile apps for iOS, Android, or Windows devices.

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