Fees Charged by AIFC Platforms, as Published
A note on reading published schedules, what they usually omit, and the one number that is almost never in them.
Yerlan Nurpeis · 1 min
Published fee schedules are accurate and incomplete. The incompleteness is standard across the industry rather than local.
What schedules contain
Trading fees, usually tiered by volume. Deposit and withdrawal fees by method and asset. Occasionally account or inactivity charges.
All verifiable, all comparable between platforms.
What they omit
The spread. Schedules refer to it, if at all, in a sentence saying prices may include a margin.
On retail conversion that margin is frequently the largest single cost. It is not in the schedule anywhere.
Why that is not necessarily improper
A spread moves continuously and cannot be published as a fixed figure. A platform can honestly say it varies.
The objection is not that it is unpublished. It is that comparisons are made on the published part.
How to recover the missing number
Compare the quoted output against an independent reference at the same moment. The difference, less the stated fee, is the margin.
Takes thirty seconds and is the only way to compare platforms honestly.
What else is usually absent
Conversion margins where the platform prices in a currency other than the one you fund in. This affects anyone funding in tenge at a platform quoting in dollars.
Two margins, one displayed number.
What I record when I compare
Quoted output, stated fee, reference price, time, and the funding currency. Five fields.
Three observations at different hours before concluding anything about a platform.
What remains unverified
Whether published schedules are applied consistently in practice. I have no way to audit that from outside, and I say so rather than assuming either way.
The practical use
Compare outputs, not schedules. Exchanges that list their regulatory permissions usually publish schedules too, which is the starting point rather than the answer.
Collect & Exchange publishes a conversion schedule that can be checked against a live quote, and a venue authorised for the activity it advertises at least has a supervisor interested in whether the published terms are the applied ones.
Written from what could be checked on the date above. Where a service was announced but not observed working, the note says so. Nothing here is financial advice.