Nova Trade: Two EU Warnings, No FCA Licence

Verdict up front: Nova Trade (nova-trade.com) was named in a public warning by Spain’s CNMV on 16 March 2026 as not authorised to provide investment services. The UK company number it displays belongs to a real company — registered for internet retail and IT consultancy, not financial services, and not FCA-authorised. Treat it as unregulated and high-risk.

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What is Nova Trade?

Nova Trade operates at nova-trade.com, offering online trading and citing UK company registration 10544720 together with an address in Milton Keynes. Both details are genuine and both check out at Companies House — which is exactly why they are worth examining rather than dismissing.

Company 10544720 is NOVA TRADE COMPANY LTD, incorporated on 3 January 2017 and still active, at 7 Capek Road, Oakgrove, Milton Keynes MK10 9TQ. An investor who takes the number from the website and searches the register finds a real, active British company at the stated address. The check appears to pass.

What the register actually says

Read the entry properly and it says something different. Every UK company records Standard Industrial Classification codes describing what it does. This one carries 47910 — retail sale via mail order houses or via the internet — and 62020, information technology consultancy.

There is no investment code, no brokerage code, no payment-services code. On its own filings, the company is registered as an online retailer and an IT consultancy. Whatever is being offered at nova-trade.com, the company number displayed alongside it belongs to an entity that has not told the register it is in the financial-services business at all.

Incorporation is not authorisation

This is the confusion the whole presentation depends on, and it is worth stating flatly. Registering a UK company is an administrative act. It costs a nominal fee, takes minutes online, requires one director and an address, and involves no assessment of competence, capital or honesty. Companies House is a filing repository. It does not vet anybody.

Authorisation to handle client money and provide investment services is an entirely separate process, run by the Financial Conduct Authority. It requires capital, fit-and-proper testing of senior managers, compliance systems, client-money segregation, complaints procedures and ongoing supervision. Authorised firms appear on the Financial Services Register with a Firm Reference Number, and their clients get access to the Financial Ombudsman Service and, in defined circumstances, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

A company number and an FRN look superficially similar — both are official-sounding numbers from a British body. They mean completely different things. One says a company exists. The other says a regulator has examined a firm and permitted it to handle your money.

What the CNMV warning adds

On 16 March 2026 the Spanish regulator named nova-trade.com among nineteen entities in a single batch of warnings, recording that it is not authorised to provide investment services and is not registered as a crypto-asset service provider under the EU’s markets-in-crypto-assets regulation.

Italy’s CONSOB followed on 21 July 2026 with a warning of its own, on the same basis. Two EU regulators, four months apart, have now recorded that this platform is not authorised in their jurisdictions.

The significance is jurisdictional. An entity soliciting clients in Spain or Italy requires authorisation there, and none exists. Combined with the absence of any FCA authorisation in the country whose company number the site displays, the position is that the platform presents British credentials while being licensed in neither Britain nor Spain.

One thing we are not saying

We cannot establish whether nova-trade.com is genuinely operated by NOVA TRADE COMPANY LTD or is displaying that company’s details without its knowledge. Both are possible; the address and number match the register exactly, which is consistent with either. We name the company because the website names it. Readers should not assume wrongdoing by the registered company on the strength of this article, and we make no such allegation.

Check it for yourself

Nothing above depends on trusting us. Search the name on Google, ask ChatGPT, and run the register checks named in the evidence box. A regulator warning takes about a minute to confirm on the regulator’s own website, and that minute is the cheapest due diligence available to any investor.

Look up company 10544720 on Companies House and read the SIC codes for yourself. Then search the FCA’s Financial Services Register for the firm name and see whether an authorisation appears. Then search the CNMV’s warning register for nova-trade. Three public searches, a few minutes, and you will know more than the website tells you. The site is at nova-trade.com.

If you have already deposited

Act on paper, not on hope. Save every screenshot, chat log, email, payment reference and wallet address before the platform can close your account — once access goes, so does your evidence. Report the loss to your national financial regulator and to your police force’s fraud unit. Tell your bank or card issuer immediately; where funds moved by card or transfer within recent weeks, a recall or chargeback is sometimes still possible. If you paid in cryptocurrency, the transaction cannot be reversed, but the receiving address is permanent evidence and exchanges can sometimes freeze onward movement.

Then brace for the second approach. Victims of investment fraud are frequently contacted again by people offering to recover the money for an upfront fee, sometimes posing as lawyers, regulators or the platform’s own compliance department. That is a second fraud aimed at the same victim. No legitimate recovery service, and no regulator anywhere, asks for a payment before returning your funds.

The bottom line

Nova Trade points to a real Companies House registration to imply legitimacy. That registration proves a company exists and describes it as an internet retailer and IT consultancy. It does not authorise anyone to take deposits or provide investment services, and a European regulator has publicly recorded that this platform is not authorised to do so. Without a licence, your funds carry no regulatory protection at all.

Reviewed by David Sanders, Licensed Fraud Investigation Agent, Investor Protection Unit — Pinkerton. Corrections: support@ettran.com.