These Terms of Service ("Terms", "Client Agreement") constitute a legally binding contract, under Portuguese and European Union financial services law, between:
(a) BTG Pactual Portugal – Empresa de Investimento, S.A. ("BTG Pactual Portugal", "Firm", "we", "us", "our"), a Portuguese sociedade anónima with share capital fully paid-up, registered at the Lisbon Commercial Registry (NIPC) 516345591, registered address Av. da Liberdade 180, 1250-146 Lisboa, Portugal, authorised and supervised as an investment firm by the Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários (CMVM) under licence nº 414/21;
(b) The natural or legal person ("Client", "you", "your") who has submitted an account application and been approved under our onboarding procedures and, where applicable, the entity on whose behalf an individual is duly authorised to act (Power of Attorney / corporate resolution on file).
"Platform" means the BTG MARKET proprietary online trading, client-area and back-office environment (desktop WebTrader, mobile apps iOS/Android, MetaTrader 4 bridges, API). "Instrument" means any financial instrument within the meaning of Section C of Annex I MiFID II (Directive 2014/65/EU) offered by us, including without limitation: CFDs on FX, indices, commodities (spot metals & energies), shares, ETFs, government & corporate bonds, and digital-asset derivatives.
Natural Persons
Minimum 18 years old, with full legal capacity, not subject to bankruptcy proceedings, guardianship or protective measures, and not resident in any restricted jurisdiction (FATF black/grey lists, OFAC/UN/EU sanctions lists, or jurisdictions outside the CMVM MiFID passporting perimeter).
Legal Persons
Validly incorporated under applicable law, with the corporate purpose and authority to invest in financial instruments, not subject to insolvency, liquidation, dissolution or equivalent proceedings; designated beneficial owners > 25% disclosed under KYC (5th AMLD).
We reserve the right, in our absolute and sole discretion, to reject any account application where required KYC/AML checks cannot be satisfactorily completed, where the applicant appears in any sanctions or PEP screening match which remains unresolved, or where acceptance would expose the Firm to unacceptable legal, regulatory, credit, reputational or fraud risk. A rejected applicant is prohibited from re-applying under another identity or by another person as agent.
All clients are classified under MiFID II (Arts. 4(1)(9)–(11)) into Retail, Professional or Eligible Counterparty. The default category on opening is Retail, which affords the highest level of regulatory protection. Full procedure, opt-up / opt-down elections, tests and notifications are published in our Client Categorisation Policy, which forms an integral part of this Agreement. By accepting these Terms you confirm receipt, understanding and express agreement with the classification assigned to you and its implications on the level of regulatory protection applicable.
The Firm provides the following investment and ancillary services, within the perimeter authorised by the CMVM (Annex I MiFID II) and passported under Art. 34 MiFID II into EEA host member states:
- Art. 6(1) – Reception & transmission of orders in financial instruments
- Art. 6(2) – Execution of orders on behalf of clients (agency & riskless principal)
- Art. 6(3) – Dealing on own account (market making / systematic internalisation for select CFD instruments)
- Art. 6(4) – Investment advice (non-independent) – if opted into at account opening
- Annex B – Ancillary services: safekeeping & administration (omnibus client cash & collateral accounts), FX, reporting, research (marketing).
Our Execution Policy (published internally in accordance with Art. 27 MiFID II and RTS 28) details execution venues, factors, priority criteria (price, costs, speed, likelihood of execution and settlement, size, nature), RTO statistics, and our list of LPs & execution venues (≥ 20 regulated markets / MTFs / OTC liquidity providers). You acknowledge and consent to the execution policy in its entirety upon activation of any Live account.
Base currency of the Platform is EUR; account base currencies offered: EUR, USD, GBP, CHF, PLN, BRL. Client funds are held in segregated, bankruptcy-remote omnibus client money accounts at credit institutions approved under CRR (Regulation (EU) 575/2013), separate from the Firm's own funds, in compliance with the Investor Compensation Scheme (Directive 97/9/EC transposed by Decree-Law 222/2008 of 17 July, as amended) and CMVM Instruction DSI 4/2015.
Accepted funding methods: SEPA Credit Transfer, Instant SEPA, SWIFT/TARGET2 international wire, Visa / Mastercard debit cards (3-D Secure 2.2 compliant), Skrill, Neteller, Rapid Transfer, Trustly, Pix (Brazil) — subject to availability by jurisdiction and ongoing compliance review. Third-party payments are strictly prohibited; the payment source account must be in the exact legal name of the account holder, and beneficiary of withdrawals is irrevocably the same account of origin (source of funds / closed-loop) except where the original method is no longer operational and documented proof is supplied to AML Compliance.
Withdrawal processing SLAs: requests received before 15:00 WET (West European Time) on a business day are approved & released the same working day; card & e-wallet payouts arrive same-day; SEPA 1–2 business days, SWIFT 1–5 business days depending on the correspondent banking chain. The Firm is not liable for delays caused by receiving banks, sanctions filters, or bank holidays outside of Portugal.
All charges, raw spreads, mark-ups, commissions, SWAP/rollover rates, financing charges, non-trading fees (inactivity, conversion, dormant account, statement reproduction) and any applicable stamp duties, FTT, Tobin taxes or regulatory levies are published in real time on the Platform instrument specifications, on the pricing page accessible from your Client Portal, and form an integral part of this Agreement. Material changes are notified a minimum of 15 calendar days in advance via Platform dashboard banner and registered email. Pricing is always quoted and billed in the instrument currency; cross-currency debits use the mid-market reference rate of the ECB for the day of conversion, plus a 0.5% operational conversion markup (unless a specific fee applies on the instrument).
For leveraged instruments (CFDs, rolling spot FX, derivatives), margin is governed by Regulation (EU) 2017/2265 (product intervention measures for CFDs by ESMA, as onshored & amended by CMVM Regulation) — minimum margin requirements by asset class:
| Asset class | Retail minimum initial margin | Professional margin (upon opt-up) |
|---|---|---|
| Major FX pairs (EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY etc.) | 3.33% (≈ 1:30) | 0.5% to 1% |
| Non-major FX, spot gold, major indices CFD | 5% (≈ 1:20) | 1% to 2% |
| Spot silver, non-major indices, commodities excl. gold | 10% (≈ 1:10) | 2% to 3% |
| Individual shares CFD, crypto CFD | 20% (≈ 1:5) | 5% to 10% |
Margin call is triggered automatically when Equity / Used Margin ≤ 100%; Stop-out / Close-out is executed by the risk engine without prior notice when Equity / Used Margin drops at or below 50%. Positions are closed in descending order of unrealised loss until margin is restored above stop-out threshold. You expressly consent to automated close-out and acknowledge that slippage, gap risk, and liquidity deterioration may cause realised close-out prices to differ materially from the stop-out trigger level on the Platform.
Orders accepted: Market, Limit, Stop, Stop-Limit, Trailing-Stop, Good-till-Cancelled (GTC), Good-till-Date. Orders submitted outside market hours are queued as "pending" and validated when the underlying session opens. The Firm does not accept orders by voicemail, SMS, or unauthenticated email — only via the Platform authenticated session, API signed payload, or (for designated clients) telephone with call recording + two-factor voice identification.
Execution priority: best execution as defined in Art. 27 MiFID II — we take all sufficient steps to obtain the best possible result for the client, taking into account price, costs, speed, likelihood of execution & settlement, size, nature, or any other consideration relevant to the execution of the order. For Retail clients the total consideration (price + all ancillary costs) is the default priority factor; for Professional clients you may request a custom execution priority in writing.
Orders may be rejected at our discretion where: (a) the Client is on margin call / stop-out; (b) the Instrument has been suspended or delisted; (c) an extraordinary market event (circuit-breaker, LULD halt, macro flash event, FATCA/CRS tax event) causes abnormal illiquidity; (d) the order parameters (size, price) exceed our internal pre-trade risk limits; (e) the Client is subject to freezing or regulatory asset freeze order.
Pursuant to ESMA Regulation 2017/2265 and CMVM transposition, we offer automatic Negative Balance Protection (NBP) to all Retail clients on a per-account basis, at no extra cost. Should the aggregate realised & unrealised P&L on the account result in a negative equity balance as a result of leveraged CFD trading, the Firm will write the negative balance back to zero and debit the corresponding shortfall to its own P&L, once per rolling 24-hour period per Retail client, and up to a maximum compensation cap of €50,000 per single 24-hour period.
NBP explicitly does not apply to Professional clients, Eligible Counterparties, accounts used with API HFT strategies with order rates > 10 msg/s, to losses caused by client fraud, intentional abuse, tampering with the Platform, or the occurrence of an extraordinary market event defined as: (i) flash moves > ±15% within 5 seconds on any single instrument; (ii) market closure during weekends / holidays with an opening gap > ±10%; (iii) broker / LP insolvency.
Investment in financial instruments offered through the Platform involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors. You acknowledge that you have read, understood, and dated our standard Key Information Documents (KIDs), as well as the following summary risks — the full and binding document being our Risk Disclosure Annex provided at onboarding and on request. CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 76% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
- Market risk — adverse moves in FX, rates, equities, commodities and volatility surfaces may result in losses equal to, or — before NBP application — in excess of the capital invested.
- Leverage / gearing risk — a relatively small market movement will have a proportionately larger impact on margin resulting in losses greater than the initial deposit.
- Liquidity & slippage risk — executed prices may differ from requested prices, especially at news, economic data releases, open/close rotations.
- Credit / counterparty risk — we mitigate via collateralisation and clearing but the default of an LP or CSD could affect netting.
- Operational / technology risk — internet outages, data-centre failures, API latency, malicious DDoS, cyber-attacks; we mitigate via DR/BCP and SOC but cannot guarantee uninterrupted zero-downtime execution.
- Currency & country risk — for non-EUR account base, FX translation on P&L, withholding taxes, expropriation, exchange controls.
You agree not to engage in any of the following conduct, each of which constitutes a material breach of this Agreement justifying immediate suspension, closure and — where applicable — report to law enforcement / financial intelligence unit:
- Money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud, impersonation, identity theft, structuring / smurfing, layering of transactions
- Manipulation of prices / benchmark indexes, front-running, insider dealing, spoofing/layering of orders (Art. 12 & 15 MAR)
- Abusive trading strategies: arbitrage of latency / news feeds, triangular arbitrage against our pricing engine, use of any "EA"/robot on MT4 against a price feed without approval, exploitation of platform bugs — any winnings from such activity are forfeited in full
- Unauthorised chargebacks or payment-fraud reversals
- Sharing of account credentials, API keys, use of the account by a third party without a PoA filed & approved with Compliance
- Use of the Platform for any purpose in violation of EU, Portuguese, or your home jurisdiction law, including sanctions law (CFIUS, HM Treasury, OFAC, UN, EU Council regulations).
You fully indemnify, defend and hold harmless BTG Pactual Portugal, its officers, employees, agents, LPs, contractors, affiliates and assignees from and against any and all losses, claims, damages, liabilities, penalties, regulatory fines, and reasonable legal & expert witness fees arising out of, connected with, or resulting from any breach of these Terms or prohibited conduct.
Either party may terminate this Agreement at any time, without cause and without penalty, by giving 10 calendar days written notice (email is sufficient, sent to the registered address on file). At any time without notice, we may also suspend or close the account summarily if there exists a reasonable suspicion of fraud, breach of AML, sanctions violation, regulatory request, or material breach of clauses 7–11 of this Agreement. On closure, all open positions are closed by you or, failing instruction within 48 hours, by us at then-current market prices; all pending/cancelled orders are voided; available funds are remitted back to the verified payment method of origin within 5 business days, net of any pending fees, charges, negative balance, or indemnities owed to the Firm.
Dormancy fee: accounts with no login activity and no trading activity for a continuous period of 12 consecutive calendar months shall be classified as "dormant" and charged a monthly administration fee of €10 / month, until either the account is re-activated or the equity balance is reduced to zero and the account is closed automatically. Clients are notified by email 30 days before the first dormant fee is applied.
Complaints must be submitted to our Client Complaints Officer via complaints@btgmarket.com, with subject line "COMPLAINT – [account number] – [date]". We will acknowledge receipt within 5 business days and issue a final, substantiated written response (Final Response Letter) within 15 business days, extendable by a further 15 business days in complex cases, with notification of the delay and reason, in accordance with CMVM Instruction DSI 4/2015 and the Impugnação Administrativa Extraordinária regime (Lei 27/96).
If you are not satisfied with the Final Response Letter, or if we fail to respond within the deadline, you may submit your dispute, free of charge, to the CMVM out-of-court dispute resolution body via the electronic platform at cmvm.pt/en/Investors/Complaints, the Litígio Arbitral / MEDIACÃO Judicial (CJP), or the CIALL consumer arbitration centre. Online dispute resolution (ODR) platform is available under Reg. (EU) 524/2013 via ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr.
This Agreement is governed exclusively by Portuguese substantive law, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms, the investment services, the Platform, or any related non-contractual obligation shall be submitted to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the district of Lisbon, Portugal (Comarca de Lisboa) — without prejudice to any mandatory consumer-protection rules of your domicile member state that cannot be derogated from under the Brussels I bis Regulation (EU) 1215/2012.
15.1 Severability. If any provision of these Terms is held or found to be invalid, illegal or unenforceable in any jurisdiction, such validity, illegality or unenforceability shall not affect any other provision, which shall remain in full force and effect.
15.2 Waiver. No delay, indulgence or omission by the Firm shall operate as a waiver of any right or remedy. Waiver is only effective if given in writing and signed by an authorised legal representative of the Firm.
15.3 Assignment. The Client may not assign, novate, charge or otherwise transfer this Agreement or any rights hereunder without the prior written consent of the Firm. The Firm may assign this Agreement in whole or in part, or sub-contract ancillary services, to any affiliate or successor entity, subject to 60 calendar days prior notice.
15.4 Entire Agreement. These Terms, together with the Order Execution Policy, the Conflict of Interest Policy, the Conflicts Management Policy, the Client Categorisation Policy, the AML/KYC Policy, the Privacy Policy and the Cookie Policy, constitute the entire agreement between the parties and supersede any prior oral or written understandings relating to the same subject matter.
15.5 Language & Communication. The contractual language of this Agreement is English. Translations (Italian, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Nordic languages, Arabic) are available as a courtesy for the Client's convenience; however, only the English-language original text is legally binding. Communications with clients shall be made through the Platform, dedicated Client Portal secure messaging, registered email on file, or recorded telephone line as appropriate. Commercial delivery is deemed effected at the time of sending; proof of sending constitutes proof of receipt.
15.6 Amendments. Any amendment to these Terms shall be communicated to the Client by prominent notice on the Website 30 calendar days prior to the effective date. Continued use of the Platform following the effective date of the amendment constitutes tacit acceptance of the revised Terms. If you do not agree with an amendment, your sole and exclusive remedy is to close your account in accordance with clause 12.
Confirmation of Understanding & Electronic Signature: By clicking "I Accept / Activate Live Account" during onboarding, or by logging into the BTG MARKET Platform and submitting any order, deposit or transaction, you confirm that you have carefully read, fully understood, and expressly agree to be bound by every provision of these Terms of Service, including the Risk Disclosures and the Ancillary Policies referenced herein. Your act of using the Platform constitutes a valid electronic signature under Reg. (EU) No 910/2014 (eIDAS) Art. 26 and Portuguese Law 37/2014, legally binding and fully enforceable.