TL;DR — Forex cashback is a per-lot rebate you earn on every trade you place, whether it wins or loses. It comes from the commission your broker already pays to introducing partners — a cashback service simply passes most of that back to you. You keep trading exactly as you do now, and the rebate is credited automatically, usually weekly.
What forex cashback actually is
Every time you open and close a trade, your broker earns money from the spread or commission on that trade. Brokers also pay a share of that revenue to the partners (called introducing brokers, or IBs) who send them clients. Forex cashback is simply the mechanism that returns most of that IB commission to you, the trader, instead of letting it sit with a middleman.
Put plainly: you are already generating this money every time you trade. Cashback is about making sure some of it comes back to your pocket. It is not a deposit bonus, not a promotion, and not credit you have to trade through — it is a rebate on activity you were doing anyway.
Where the money comes from
The chain looks like this:
- You place a trade. The broker collects the spread or commission.
- The broker pays a set amount per lot to the introducing broker who referred you.
- A cashback provider like Expaid passes the majority of that per-lot amount back to you.
Because the rebate is tied to volume (the number of lots traded) and not to whether the trade was profitable, you earn it on winners and losers alike. That is the single most important thing to understand about cashback: it is paid on activity, not on outcome.
Why you get paid even when a trade loses
New traders often assume cashback must be some kind of catch. It is not. The broker pays the IB commission regardless of your trade result, because the commission is generated by the spread you already paid on entry. So when a cashback provider returns that commission to you, a losing trade still produces a rebate. Over hundreds of trades, that rebate meaningfully lowers your effective trading cost.
How and when you get paid
With Expaid, cashback is reconciled from your broker’s reported volume and paid weekly, straight into your trading account — there is nothing to withdraw from a separate wallet and no minimum threshold games. You link your trading account once, keep trading, and the rebate lands on schedule.
How much can you earn?
The rate depends on the broker, the instrument, and your account type — it is quoted as a dollar amount per standard lot. Gold (XAUUSD) and major forex pairs typically carry the highest rebates. The easiest way to see real numbers is to use our rebate calculator: pick your broker and monthly volume and it estimates your cashback per day, month and year. You can also compare every live rate on the broker rate board.
How to start earning cashback
Getting set up takes a few minutes and is free:
- Pick a broker from the rate board and open an account through Expaid, or move your existing account under us as your introducing broker.
- Link your trading account in the dashboard so we can reconcile your volume.
- Trade as normal — your rebate is credited weekly.
If you already trade somewhere with no rebate, see exactly what you are missing with the switch & save calculator, or read how it works end to end.