Find the Best Rated Providers to Send Money to Nigeria
Our real-time comparison engine finds the cheapest providers for your transfer to Nigeria. You save on fees and exchange rates, and more money arrives.
How to send money to Nigeria
Discover how to send money to Nigeria with the best exchange rate in four easy steps
1. Check the NGN rate against your own currency
Transfering money on the right day is a good way to optimize your transfer. Follow the evolution of the Nigerian naira exchange rate and validate your transaction when the NGN rate gets to a specific level.
2. Find the best deal by comparing all the available services.
We compare 12 money transfer companies offering money transfer services to Nigeria, such as TransferWise, Western Union, MoneyGram, Xendpay, Azimo. Using the right provider from the list is the best way to save on costs.
3. Choose the best option based on your criteria
Which criteria is the most important for you? Total cost, time for the money to arrive, customer ratings? Balance the advantages and disadvantages before selecting the provider.
In addition, it is important to pay attention to the options to pay for the transfer and receive the money. Providers often give you the option to transfer the money by wiring the money from your bank account or by debit or credit cards. On the recipient's side in Nigeria, you often have to decide if you want the amount in NGN to be deposited on a local bank account or be available for cash pick-up.
4. Sign up and start your transfer to Nigeria with the company you selected
Visit the provider's website to sign up - be prepared to give an offical ID and/or a proof of adress - and configure your transfer to Nigeria.
Find the Best Rated Providers to Send Money to Nigeria
I want to transfer money to Nigeria, but which provider should I use?
There are plenty of options for sending money back to Nigeria. Here at Monito we detail over 10 specialist money transfer providers and banks for converting your money into naira and sending it home. We know that’s a lot of ways to transfer currency to Nigeria, which is why we compare all of the most popular options side-by-side so you can make an informed choice.
The best money transfer provider for you will depend on several areas like how much you are sending, where you are sending from, the currency you are exchanging into naira and some other factors. We take all of those details into account when recommending the best way to send money to Nigeria. We’ll help you find the fastest and cheapest ways to send money home. For example, we can tell you the best providers for sending money to Nigeria from the USA or the UK.
Find which provider is best for your transfer to Nigeria
For many of us, sending money to Nigeria is a routine affair. Every month, we go to the same money transfer agent and send money to our family back home, wondering what the exchange rate will be this time. While it’s true that, until recently, we didn’t have much choice to decide which provider to use, some new players have emerged in the recent years (mostly online money transfer operators) These providers offer much better rates and lower fees!
With the currency instability of the Naira, it is more important now than ever to compare all your options before deciding which provider to use for your next money transfer to Nigeria. There is a huge saving potential: if each one of us were to use the cheapest solution available, we calculated that we could collectively save $600 million US dollars every year.
So don’t wait and use the form above now to compare your options or read the reviews of the best rated providers.
Millions of people like you send money back to Nigeria every week. With between 10 and 15 million of us living outside Nigeria, we all need an easy and inexpensive way to send nairas back home to benefit our family, friends and others. In fact, people from Nigeria send over $20 billion back home each year, that’s an average of $2,000 per person.
No banks in the UK, the US, or Nigeria have the best fees or exchange rates for converting money into naira. That’s why it’s vital to compare all of your options for sending money back to Nigeria so your naira can go further. Whether you want to make a one-off currency transfer or you need to send money regularly, we can help you find the best options.
The Best Ways to Send Naira to Nigeria
There are several good options for currency exchange, depending on how the person you’re sending money to wants to get access to their naira.
Sending Naira to Bank Account in Nigeria
If you want to send money to a bank account in Nigeria, we recommend using a specialist currency provider. However much you’re transferring, your best options include WorldRemit, TransferWise and Xoom.
Banks You Can Transfer Naira to in Nigeria
You can normally arrange to send naira to any of the following banks: Skye Bank, Union Bank of Nigeria, Zenith Bank, First Bank of Nigeria, Guaranty Trust Bank, Access Bank and United Bank for Africa.
Cash Pick-Up Locations in Naira
Some of these banks are also popular locations for picking up naira that you have transferred. If your beneficiary wants to collect naira as cash in Nigeria without going through a bank, then MoneyGram will be your best option. They have many agents and pick-up locations across Nigeria, including Ecobank, UBA and First Bank.
What information do you need to send money to a bank account in Nigeria
NUBAN (ex. 0961755019)
Nigerian Uniform Bank Account Numbers (NUBANs) are 10 digits long.
Name of the recipient's bank
The name of the bank in which the recipient has their account.
Name of the recipient
The name of the recipient's bank account's holder.
Banks in Nigeria do not use the IBAN system which facilitates international transactions. All the banks in Nigeria use the NUBAN system, so the recipient of your transfer in Nigeria should be able to communicate his NUBAN number, which you will need to set up the transfer. They should also provide the name of the bank and their full name.
While in most cases, money transfer providers make it easy by providing a list of banks from which you can select your recipient’s bank, in some cases, you might need to find the SWIFT/BIC code of the bank by yourself. This bank code website can be very useful in these cases.
Official and parallel markets for exchanging your money into Naira
There are two exchange rates in Nigeria at the moment for all foreign currencies: the official rate that was pegged to the US dollar by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to prevent excessive devaluation of the national currency (this is the rate you can see on Google and most other websites), and the parallel market rate which is much higher (up to roughly 40%).
If you want to learn more about the reasons behind these two exchange rates, check out this post on our blog, but what is important is to make sure you are not getting the artificially low exchange rate decided by the CBN, but rather find a provider that is offering to change your money into nairas at an exchange rate close to the parallel market rate.
More about the Nigerian Diaspora and Remittances
It is estimated that around 5 million Nigerians are living outside Nigeria, of which approximately half are living in other sub-Saharan African countries. Outside Africa, the largest communities of Nigerians can be found in the United Kingdom (many reside in South London) and the United States (with Houston, Texas as the center of the Nigerian diaspora in the US).
While the emigration of many educated people out of Nigeria constitutes a “brain drain” issue whose negative effect on Nigeria’s development is hard to measure, the large amounts of money that Nigerian abroad send back to their home country has an important positive impact on the country’s economy. Estimations from the World Bank put the total amount of remittances sent to Nigeria at over $20 billion US dollars, and it is believed that almost 3 million Nigerians receive money from overseas every year. This makes Nigeria the 6th largest recipient of remittances in the world.
A study from The Economist suggest that an important proportion of the younger generation of Nigerians who achieve a higher education in universities abroad return to Lagos after a while, often with the goal of starting a business.