There is a significant efficiency bottleneck in the preprocessing verification stage. The 2023 audit report of CySEC in Cyprus shows that the KYC process of sway markets takes an average of 17.5 hours (123% longer than the industry benchmark), resulting in a 24% rate of new users’ first withdrawal abandonment. The AML files of this platform have a 38% duplicate submission rate due to format compliance issues (deviation from the ISO 19005-2 standard). The difference between the verification cycle of 18.3 hours for users in Western Europe and 42.6 hours for users in Southeast Asia highlights the imbalance of regional services. German BaFin monitoring indicates that the peak delay in document review in Q4 2023 reached 29 hours, triggering 7.2% of users to file complaints with regulatory authorities.
The performance of payment channels shows a polarization. The average settlement cycle of SWIFT’s US dollar wire transfer in 2023 was 3.8 working days (81% slower than the Top10 in the industry), and the delay probability during the peak period on Thursday was as high as 31.7%. In contrast, the efficiency of the cryptocurrency channel has significantly improved: After the upgrade in June 2024, stablecoins can be received within 3.7 minutes through the Polygon chain (an increase of 99.6%), with the cost reduced to $0.002 per transaction. Meanwhile, the confirmation time of the Bitcoin network remains at 1.5 hours (requiring a depth of 9 blocks), resulting in 14.7% of users voluntarily switching to other types of coins.
The issue of complex cost structure has been warned by regulatory authorities in many countries. The penalty announcement of South Africa’s FSCA disclosed that the actual cost rate reached 2.7% of the withdrawal amount (exceeding the disclosed value by 80%), among which 35 priority processing fees, 28 weekend express fees and 0.6% currency conversion fees constitute the main hidden costs. According to statistics from BCSC Canada, the actual rate for a small withdrawal of 500 yuan exceeds 7.43.5 nominal handling fees and $33.5 back-end costs, resulting in an average deviation of 18.7% in the final amount received by users.
The risk control rules have sparked controversy over fund freezes. The 2023 ruling of Brazil’s CVM (case No. 08012.020888/2023-81) confirmed that the platform intercepted 15.7% of withdrawal requests (2.5 times the industry average) during exchange rate fluctuations exceeding 3σ events, with the longest freeze period of 11 days, crossing the regulatory red line. Third-party stress tests show that when the 30-day return rate of an account reaches 78%, the probability of triggering a second review surges to 92% (the basic probability is only 18%), resulting in an average of 2.4 failed withdrawals per month for high-frequency traders.
The technical failure rate exceeded the industry threshold. UptimeRobot monitored that the API interface availability rate in 2023 was 93.7% (lower than the standard value of 97.5%), and the occurrence frequency of error code 502 during the midnight GMT period was 17.8%. During the system upgrade of SWAY-CORE 4.2 in March 2024, the interruption of the e-wallet caused a 34-hour delay in $12,000 funds. The post-event compensation plan only covered the actual losses of 67% of users (according to the case record of CMA in Kenya CM/241/2024).
The improvement measures have brought about quantifiable optimizations. After the platform spent 2.8 million to upgrade the TMS system in 2024, the euro withdrawal speed was increased to 19 hours (an increase of 54.818 compared to 2023). A fine of $32,000 is required for 500 withdrawals, indicating that there is still room for improvement in the compliance process.