Is CaxtonFX Safe?

Company size:

Caxton FX remains to be an SME, with around 110 employees on LinkedIn. The company has only one office, which is based in London. Having been founded in 2002 however, Caxton is a well-established player in this market, with a keen eye of specialisation.

Regulated By:

Caxton is fully regulated in the UK under the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and HMRC. The FCA ensures that your money is safe when using Caxton — if the company gets into financial difficulty, “Client Money” is safe. Caxton also claims to be committed to anti-money laundering policy.

Awards:

Caxton’s most recognisable award was winning the FX Provider of the Year, awarded by the FT and Investor Chronicle Awards (2018). They are regularly featured in the media, in which they are mentioned several times per month by British newspapers regarding travel currency service providers.

Conclusion:

Caxton FX isn’t a household brand name, but it’s certainly established. The company is a medium-sized company, with over 100 employees, and is fully regulated. 

CaxtonFX Customer Reviews

Research:

Trustpilot has over 2,500 reviews on Caxton FX, in which they are rated 4.7 out of 5. 

4.3/5 rated on Google with 9 reviews.

Conclusion:

On aggregate, Caxton FX have a very strong reception by customers. This is backed up on other review sites too, not just Trustpilot. However, the negative reviews shouldn’t be ignored, as they allude to the possibility of being able to get a better exchange rate elsewhere (some competitors use the interbank rates), as well as having a very limited selection of countries that the card works in.

CaxtonFX Exchange Rates & Fees

Fees:

There are no fees incurred when using the card abroad. There are fees however when you use the card domestically (£1.50). 

Exchange Rates: 

The exchange spread taken is not publicly disclosed as a flat rate. They do say that exchange rates can be locked in, which is a good feature, but it’s impossible to say much about the exchange rates other than they’re not the interbank rate, which is what Revolut uses. 

Limits:

Minimum of £50 can be put onto the card. A maximum single deposit is £12,000 (£50,000 annual). Importantly, there is a maximum ATM withdrawal per day amount of £300.

Conclusion:

There’s a dangerous misconception around Caxton claiming to have no fees abroad. Whilst this is true, customers are not warned that the ATM providers themselves may have a large fee, meaning customers have been put into a disadvantageous situation because of how Caxton market themselves.

CaxtonFX Global Reach & Service

Research:

• Dedicated Dealer: No
• Offices: London
• Ways to approach: Email, Twitter, Phone
• Translations: No
• Accepts clients: UK only
• Currencies Handled: 28

Client reviews: Mostly positive (4.7 on Trustpilot out of 2,499 reviews)

Conclusion:

Caxton FX do not have much of a global presence. Whilst their customer service has been praised by reviews, there is not a dedicated dealer, nor is there much of a need for one due to their limited services. The lack of global presence however could make it harder to contact them when far across the globe. Lastly, the limited amount of currencies supported means that this is not a card you can rely on when travelling the world. Instead, it’s a card that you would more likely use for a single destination trip.

Additional Functionalities

Caxton has everything that you expect when it comes to having a card. You can manage it from your app, it has contactless, and it has chip and pin security. Given that it’s somewhat borderless, the card can have multiple currencies on one card.

If you’re worried about currency fluctuations, you can lock in a fixed rate with Caxton. They don’t define this as hedging, but it is similar, as we can only assume that they give you a slightly worse rate for taking on more risk. You can also be alerted each morning with an email regarding the exchange rates.

Conclusion:

As far as having a card goes, Caxton seems to have a good amount of functionality for it. However, their focus on this has a trade off: there’s not much functionality elsewhere, such as hedging forward contracts, integration with other software and so on.