About Rift Compare

Who runs this desk

Rift Compare is run by a small editorial team that writes only about gold (XAU/USD) trading for readers in Kenya. The desk is independent of every broker it covers and holds no ownership stake in any of them. It is not a broker, not a bank and not a licensed investment adviser, so nothing here is personal advice.

The work is narrow on purpose: check whether a resident of Kenya can open, fund and withdraw from a broker, then describe the costs and the platform honestly. We do not cover other instruments or other countries, and we do not write about firms we have not checked.

How the desk is paid

Affiliate links are the only revenue. When a reader opens a broker account through a link on this site, the broker may pay the desk a referral fee, and that fee is what keeps the pages free to read. No broker pays for a place in a ranking, and no payment changes a score.

Payment never buys a rating and never hides a weakness. If a broker scores badly on funding or withdrawal for Kenyan readers, that weakness stays in the write-up whether or not the firm has an affiliate programme. Readers who prefer to avoid affiliate links can open the broker directly.

What the desk will not do

The desk does not handle accounts, process deposits or withdrawals, or recover funds, and it cannot intervene in a dispute with a broker. It also does not give personal trading advice or tell anyone whether to buy or sell gold. Those matters belong with the broker and, where relevant, with the regulator.

Where a regulator fact matters, the desk states it plainly: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA — not by the CMA of Kenya. The desk itself claims no licence and no regulatory status of any kind.

The editor, the reviewers, and the decision log behind every page

The desk is run by a single editor who writes and owns every page, and decisions about what to publish are logged with a date and a reason so the record can be checked later. That editor is not named here because the page does not carry author bylines, but the decision log exists to make the process auditable rather than personal. When a page changes, the log records what changed and why, which matters for a site covering gold (XAU/USD) where a small wording shift can change what a reader does with real money.

Decisions are made against a fixed checklist, not by taste: every claim must trace to a stated fact, every cost described must say what it consists of rather than whether it is good, and every risk statement must survive being read by someone who has never traded. The editor applies that checklist before a page goes live and again when a reader challenges a line. Where a fact is missing, the page says what the outcome depends on instead of filling the gap with a number, which is why you will see phrases like 'the cap that applies to the entity serving this country' rather than a figure nobody supplied.

The desk does not accept outside drafts, sponsored inserts or guest sections, so the decision log has one author and one standard. If a page covers FxPro, the editor states only that FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA, not by the CMA of Kenya, and stops there. No claim about a spread, a swap, a commission or a minimum deposit is written as a number because none was supplied. That restraint is the decision, recorded like any other, and it is why the page can be checked line by line against its own facts.

What counts as a number this desk will print, and what it will not

A number is printed only when it was given to the desk as a fact, and then it is printed exactly as given with its unit and its condition attached. For gold (XAU/USD) that means one lot equals 100 oz, one pip equals 0.01, and the reference price is about 4275.0. Those are instrument facts, not market predictions, and they are stated so a reader can size a position rather than so the page can sound authoritative. Anything outside that set is described by what it depends on, never by a figure the desk invented.

A cost is never described as competitive, tight, low or best because no spread, commission, swap or minimum deposit figure was supplied to support such a word. Instead the page says what the cost consists of and what it depends on, which for gold trading means the spread quoted by the platform, any commission attached to the account type, and financing if a position is held overnight. The reader is told which of those to check on the broker's own schedule rather than being handed a number that would age badly and could not be defended.

The worked margin figure is the model for how a number is used: at the applicable cap, a 0.10-lot gold position needs about $85.50 margin, and the page says that a leverage cap is a cap, not a setting to aim at. It does not state any other leverage ratio. When a reader asks for a figure the desk was not given, the honest answer is what the figure depends on, and that answer is treated as the published standard rather than a dodge.

How the desk is funded, and the line that funding does not cross

The site is funded by its own commercial activity, and no broker pays for placement, for a favourable sentence, or for the removal of a risk warning. If a page mentions FxPro, it does so because the page is about FxPro, and the mention carries the same regulator caveat every time: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA, not by the CMA of Kenya. Funding does not buy a different caveat, a softer word about cost, or a number the desk was not given.

What funding does influence is scope: the desk covers the instruments and brokers its readers actually use in Kenya, which is why gold (XAU/USD) and M-Pesa funding routes appear here and other markets do not. That is a choice about where to spend editing time, not a promise about any broker's quality. The editorial standard for a number is applied identically whether a page is about a large broker or a small one, and a page with fewer supplied facts simply says more about what the outcome depends on.

The line funding does not cross is the one that would turn a description into a recommendation. The desk will not tell a reader that a spread is competitive, that a fee is low, or that a platform is best, because none of those claims can be supported by the facts it holds. It will say what a cost consists of, what a leverage cap is, and that trading gold on leverage can lose more than the margin committed. That separation between who pays and what gets written is the whole point of stating the funding model on the page.

The correction route: how a challenge reaches the editor and what happens next

A challenge reaches the editor through the contact route published on the site, and it is logged with the page, the sentence and the reason given, so it can be answered against the same fact set the page was written from. The reader does not need to be a customer of any broker or a professional trader to raise one. A challenge that identifies a sentence and says which supplied fact it contradicts, or which unsupported claim it contains, is the fastest kind to resolve because it can be checked directly rather than argued about.

What happens next depends on what the challenge shows. If the sentence states something the desk was not given, such as a spread figure, a swap number or a leverage ratio other than the cap that applies to the entity serving this country, the sentence is removed or rewritten to say what the outcome depends on. If the sentence misstates a supplied fact, such as the pip size of 0.01 or the 100 oz lot, it is corrected and the decision log records the change. A challenge that disagrees with a stated fact without new evidence is answered by pointing to the fact, not by softening the page.

The desk does not run a comments section, so a challenge is handled privately and the correction, where one is made, appears on the page itself rather than in a thread. That keeps the published text as the single record a later reader will see. Challenges about FxPro's regulatory position are answered with the exact caveat the page carries: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA, not by the CMA of Kenya. If a challenge asks for a number the desk does not hold, the reply says so and explains what the number would depend on.

Why the desk writes for Kenya in shillings and names M-Pesa, not a generic audience

The desk writes for readers funding accounts from Kenya, so amounts are framed in KSh where a shilling figure is useful and M-Pesa is named as the familiar funding route because that is how readers actually move money. The regulator named is the CMA, and the caveat is stated exactly: FxPro is licensed by the FCA (UK), CySEC and FSCA, not by the CMA of Kenya. That sentence is not decoration; it tells a Kenyan reader that the local authority does not supervise this broker, which changes what recourse looks like if something goes wrong.

Writing for a local audience also means the instrument is kept concrete. Gold is quoted as XAU/USD, one lot is 100 oz, one pip is 0.01, and the reference price is about 4275.0, so a reader can convert a move into shillings without guessing. At the applicable cap, a 0.10-lot gold position needs about $85.50 margin, and the page says plainly that the cap is a cap, not a setting to aim at. No other leverage ratio is stated anywhere, because none was supplied for this audience.

The local framing stops at description. The desk does not claim that M-Pesa funding is faster or cheaper than any other route, because no such comparison was supplied, and it does not call any cost competitive. It says what the cost consists of and what it depends on, and it repeats the CMA caveat wherever the broker's regulation is relevant. A reader in Nairobi and a reader in Mombasa get the same sentences, the same caveat and the same refusal to print a number the desk cannot stand behind.

The risk sentence every page must carry, and why it is not fine print

Every page states that trading gold on leverage is high-risk and can lose more than the margin committed, and that sentence is placed in the body rather than hidden in a footer. The reason is arithmetic: at the applicable cap, a 0.10-lot gold position needs about $85.50 margin, and a price move against that position can exceed the margin quickly because one lot is 100 oz and one pip is 0.01. The worked figure is there to make the risk concrete, not to suggest that the cap is a target to trade at.

The risk statement is written to survive a reader who skips everything else. It does not promise a recovery, a strategy or a guarantee, and it does not use the word safe. It says that leverage is a cap, that a cap is not a setting to aim at, and that losses can exceed the amount committed. Where a page describes a cost, it says what the cost consists of and what it depends on, so a reader can see that spread, commission and overnight financing all act on the same position that carries the margin risk.

The sentence is repeated rather than compressed into one disclaimer because readers arrive at different pages. A reader who lands on the margin explanation and a reader who lands on the funding section both see the same warning in plain words. The desk does not treat the warning as a legal formality, and it does not let a broker mention soften it. If a page cannot carry the warning honestly, the page does not run, which is the same standard the desk applies to every number it prints.