EA: is manual Transfer Market trading for profit actually allowed in FC 26?

After everything that happened with my Transfer Market sanction, I ended up with a question that initially seemed completely obvious to me.

I carefully reread the official EA SPORTS FC rules and realized that I cannot find a direct answer to it:

Is it allowed in EA SPORTS FC to systematically buy cards on the Transfer Market below their current market value specifically to resell them for more and earn Coins from the difference?

I am not talking about bots, macros, third-party software, buying Coins, multiple accounts, coordinated transactions between players, or deliberately transferring Coins.

Those things are clear. They are prohibited.

I am talking about an ordinary person with a controller:

find a good public listing → buy it → relist it at the current market price → make a profit → repeat.

In other words, normal manual trading or flipping.

Why did such a basic question even occur to me?

The official EA SPORTS FC rules say that players can earn Coins by playing and by selling Items on the Transfer Market at a fair Transfer Market price.

They also describe Coin Distribution as using the Transfer Market to transfer Coins to another player, including buying or selling Items significantly above or below their average price for the purpose of transferring Coins.

That part makes sense.

If two people coordinate, one lists a cheap card for a huge amount and the other intentionally buys it to transfer Coins, that is Coin Distribution.

If connected accounts deliberately move value between each other through the market, that also makes sense.

If someone uses a bot, autobuyer, macro, or prohibited software, that is also clear.

But I could not find the same clear answer to a different question:

Can I buy an Item not because I want it for my squad, but simply because it is underpriced and I intend to resell it for profit?

This becomes even more interesting when compared with EA SPORTS FC Mobile. In the official FC Mobile rules, EA explicitly describes earning Coins by buying and selling Items on the Transfer Market.

The meaning there is immediately clear.

I could not find an equally clear statement in the rules for the main EA SPORTS FC game.

So first, I would genuinely like an answer to one very simple question:

Is manual trading for profit allowed — yes or no?

Here is a simple example.

A card normally sells for approximately 900,000 Coins.

Someone publicly lists it with Buy Now for 500,000.

I do not know the seller. The seller does not know me. We have never communicated. I simply see the listing first.

I buy the card not because I want to use it in my squad, but because I understand that I can probably resell it around the current market price and earn the difference.

Is this an allowed use of the Transfer Market or not?

From that answer, there are only two logical paths.

If the answer is no

If EA SPORTS FC does not allow players to systematically buy Items for the purpose of reselling them for profit, please simply say so clearly.

Then most of the questions below disappear.

But in that case, please show where exactly this is written in a way that an ordinary player can understand before receiving a sanction.

The game itself allows me to search for Items, sort by price, place bids, use Buy Now, and then relist purchased Items on the Transfer Market.

I could not find a rule that clearly says:

“You may buy Items for your Club, but buying Items specifically for resale and profit is prohibited.”

If such a rule exists, please point us to it.

Then the situation becomes simple: I and other players misunderstood what the Transfer Market is intended for.

If the answer is yes

If manual trading for profit is allowed, then practical questions begin.

1. What exactly is a fair Transfer Market price?

Suppose I buy a card for 500k because somebody listed it cheaply, while the rest of the market is around 900k. I relist it for 880–900k. To me, that is a normal trade: buy at a bargain price, sell at the market price.

Does EA also consider that a normal trade?

And what counts as a fair price when a card can move significantly within an hour because of packs, SBCs, new content, supply, or changing demand?

2. Is it safe to buy an unusually cheap public Buy Now listing?

Suppose an Item is worth around 900k and somebody lists it for 500k.

I have no way of knowing why the seller did that.

Did they make a mistake?

Did they urgently need Coins?

Did they misjudge the market?

Did they simply want a quick sale?

Or is that account actually involved in some prohibited activity?

The buyer does not know.

The buyer simply sees a good public listing.

If I press Buy Now, can that transaction put me under suspicion for Coin Distribution?

If the answer is no, great. Please simply say so.

If the answer is yes, how can a legitimate buyer possibly protect themselves?

3. Is a normal auction safer?

Suppose an Item normally sells for 600k.

I bid 300k in a public auction. Nobody else bids higher, and I win the card for 300k.

I do not know anyone involved. I did not coordinate anything. I simply won an auction at a good price.

Is that a normal bargain?

Or can the large difference between the average market price and my winning bid itself make the transaction suspicious?

4. What if the seller themselves is considered suspicious by EA?

Imagine an account I have never seen before is actually involved in prohibited Coin transfers.

That account lists a card on the normal public Transfer Market.

I know nothing about the seller and happen to buy that card.

Can that transaction associate my account with their account in EA's systems?

If it can, how is an ordinary buyer supposed to protect themselves when the Transfer Market is anonymous and buyers have no information about the seller?

5. What about the opposite situation?

I list my card at what I consider a normal market price.

I do not choose the buyer and I do not know who will buy it.

If an account that EA considers suspicious buys my card, can that create a problem for me as the seller?

I cannot stop a specific person from bidding on or buying my Item.

6. Is there a limit to how active a completely manual trader can be?

Imagine someone spends several hours doing nothing except using the Transfer Market.

They place a very large number of bids.

They repeatedly buy and sell the same popular cards.

They constantly search for cheap listings, buy them, relist them and sell them again.

Everything is done manually on a console with a controller. No bots, scripts, macros, or automation.

Is there a number of bids, transactions, or hours of activity after which this behavior itself becomes a violation or becomes suspicious enough that the player risks receiving a sanction?

If such limits exist for manual trading, where can players read them?

7. What if somebody simply earns a lot of Coins very quickly?

EA's rules say that players can hold as many Coins as they want as long as those Coins were earned legitimately.

So does that mean that a high profit or rapid growth of the Coin balance is not itself a violation if every transaction was an ordinary manual market transaction?

Or can unusually rapid Coin growth itself become a reason for suspicion?

8. What do temporary market restrictions after a large number of actions mean?

When trading very actively, players can sometimes receive temporary restrictions on bidding or other Transfer Market actions.

Is this simply a technical rate limit?

Or is it effectively a warning from the system:

“Your activity is starting to look suspicious”.

If it is the second, what exactly is the player expected to change?

9. And the most practical question

If manual trading is allowed, what exactly should a legitimate trader do so that a normal profitable transaction is not later interpreted as Coin Distribution?

Avoid very cheap Buy Now listings?

Only use bidding?

Avoid placing too many bids?

Avoid trading the same card repeatedly?

Avoid spending several hours on the Transfer Market?

Avoid earning Coins too quickly?

Or are all of those things completely legitimate as long as everything is done manually and there is no coordination with another account?

I believe these questions can be answered without revealing any secrets about EA's anti-fraud systems.

I am not asking EA to publish algorithms, internal thresholds, detection methods, or information that would help cheaters bypass enforcement.

A cheater already knows that they are using a bot, buying Coins, or deliberately transferring Coins between accounts.

I am asking something different:

What should a legitimate manual trader do to remain within the rules?

There is another reason why I believe this question matters.

EA has already publicly acknowledged false bans related to Balance Transfer

On this same official forum, an EA Community Manager thanked players for reporting false bans and confirmed that the Security Team reviewed cases and removed many sanctions.

That is a very important fact.

It shows that an initial enforcement decision cannot automatically be treated as infallible simply because a sanction was applied.

Mistakes happen. EA has publicly acknowledged them and corrected them before.

And that is completely understandable.

No complicated anti-fraud system has to be perfect.

The problem is not that a system can sometimes make a mistake.

The problem begins when, after that mistake, a player cannot understand what exactly was considered a violation or meaningfully challenge it.

And that leads to a second question.

What is an appeal actually supposed to provide?

A person buys the game, spends money on it, spends their time playing it, and continues playing the series because they enjoy the product.

At some point, a system decides that this player's activity violated the rules and applies a sanction.

Fine. This is exactly why an appeal process exists.

I do not believe EA is required to reveal its algorithms, internal evidence, or the architecture of its anti-fraud systems.

But there is a huge difference between:

“We do not disclose our detection methods”

and

“We do not tell the player what specific behavior was considered a violation at all.”

In my own case, I submitted five appeals.

I explained my trading activity in detail.

I explained that the actual purchases were made manually from my console.

I asked EA to review devices, bids, purchases, sales, Coin movements, account history, and possible relationships with sellers.

I asked specific technical questions.

I separately contacted EA Help.

In the end, EA officially told me that the sanction for cheating was correctly applied.

But after five appeals, I still do not know:

What exactly did I do?

Which transaction was considered a violation?

Which specific rule did I break?

What should I have done differently?

What am I supposed to avoid doing in the next game?

An appeal can absolutely end in rejection. That is not the problem.

But shouldn't the player at least understand why the appeal was rejected and what behavior EA determined to be wrong?

Especially when EA itself has already publicly acknowledged that false positives have happened.

If the enforcement system can make mistakes, then a meaningful appeal process should be the safety mechanism that separates an actual rule-breaker from a legitimate player caught by a false positive.

Otherwise, a very simple question appears:

What is the purpose of the appeal process?

And one final question for the official EA Forum itself

I am writing this here specifically because this is the official EA Forum.

Community Managers are here.

EA representatives respond in other discussions.

EA has previously posted official responses here regarding false bans.

I am not asking anybody on the forum to remove my sanction.

I am asking something much simpler:

Can somebody from EA who actually understands the Transfer Market rules and how they are applied answer these questions?

Starting with the most basic one:

Is it actually allowed to manually buy cards specifically to resell them for profit — yes or no?

If the answer is no, please show us the rule.

If the answer is yes, please explain the boundaries of legitimate trading to ordinary players.

What is a fair Transfer Market price?

What should a player do when they find an unusually cheap public listing?

Is there a risk from placing a very large number of completely manual bids?

Can an accidental transaction with a problematic account put an innocent user at risk?

Can very fast but completely manual profits themselves become a problem?

And what exactly should a player do to avoid crossing a boundary they do not even know exists?

This is not a request to reveal security secrets.

It is a request to explain to customers the rules of a feature EA itself provides them to use.

If official answers to these questions already exist, please point us to them.

If they do not, I believe the official EA Forum is exactly the right place for somebody who understands the Transfer Market and its enforcement to provide a clear answer once and for all.

Because a normal player should not have to look at a great public listing and wonder:

“If I press Buy Now right now, am I simply making a good trade, or am I risking being accused of cheating?”