The two numbers on 4 November
On 4 November one pound bought about 1,857 naira at the real market rate, the number Wise shows on its currency page. Wise's own price feed showed 1,857.16 at 09:07 GMT. Other licensed UK apps are free to give you less than this, and most do.
At the same time, the Aboki Forex tracker showed the street buying pounds at 1,835 naira and selling them at 1,850. You are handing over pounds, so the buying rate is your rate. It sat about 22 naira below the market rate, or about 1.2 percent. A second tracker, NgnRates, which collects reports from its users, showed 1,810 and 1,860 on 3 November. Both put his buying rate under the market rate.
The Central Bank of Nigeria's own pound rate was lower than both, at about 1,807 naira on 3 November, the latest figure that morning.
The gap between the Central Bank's dollar rate and the street moves too. On 7 August the bank's table and the street quotes showed about 4 percent. Between the bank's 3 November rate and the street on the morning of 4 November it was about 3.4 percent, with 1,346 naira to the dollar at the bank and about 1,393 on the street. In August 2025 it was about 1 to 2 percent. So it goes up and down.
What arrives on £300
| Who, on the morning of 4 November | Naira on £300 | Against Wise |
|---|---|---|
| Wise | 552,987.96 | - |
| Aboki at 1,835 | 550,500 | 2,488 less |
| LemFi at 1,820, at 09:07 GMT | 546,000 | 6,988 less |
| Xoom | 539,628.03 | 13,360 less |
| Western Union | 536,858.62 | 16,129 less |
Wise shows a fee of £2.24 and adds no markup to the real rate. The Wise, Xoom and Western Union amounts have the fee taken out of the £300, so each is what arrives if you pay £300 in all. The aboki figure is 1,835 times £300. Your own aboki may quote a little more or a little less. We do not have a published figure for his own cut, and the quoted rate may already hold it. Any cut on top comes off the number above.
So ask him one thing: how many naira for a pound today? On 4 November he had to pay above about 1,843 to beat Wise on £300. If you want to check on another day, take the amount Wise shows on the screen and divide it by the pounds you are sending. That is the rate he has to beat.
The aboki was still ahead of Xoom and Western Union, by about 10,900 and 13,600 naira. Xoom showed a £1.49 fee and a rate about 2.7 percent below the market, and Western Union a £1.99 fee and a rate about 3 percent below. Both prices were sampled earlier that morning. If one of those is your usual app, the aboki was the better price, and Wise was better than both.
LemFi's figure comes from its own calculator, which showed 1,820 at 09:07 GMT and a £5 bonus. Check in the app whether the bonus applies to you. Later that day LemFi moved ahead of Wise. At 20:14 GMT it showed 1,845 with no fee, which on £300 is 553,500 naira, about 1,600 more than the 551,919 Wise showed at that time. So check both on the day you send.
Remitly, Sendwave and WorldRemit did not have a price in the Wise comparison that morning. That is a gap in what we could see, not a comment on those apps.
The order can change. On 7 August, the aboki's buying rate was 1,900 naira per pound. £300 at that rate was 570,000 naira, about 13,900 more than the 556,093.85 Wise delivered that day. That is about £7 in his favour. On 4 November he was about £1 behind.
What it looks like on a bigger send
On £1,000, Wise delivered 1,845,887.04 naira with a £6.07 visible fee. At the aboki's buying rate of 1,835, £1,000 is 1,835,000 naira. That is about 10,900 naira less, or about £6.
A big trade can get a better rate than the quoted one, so ask. He had to pay above about 1,846 to beat Wise on £1,000 that morning.
Western Union on £1,000 delivered 1,796,092.12 naira, with its £2.99 fee taken out of the £1,000. That is about 49,800 behind Wise. Xoom had no £1,000 price in the comparison.
So on 4 November, at the quoted buying rate, Wise put more in the account on both amounts. Wise is also the safer choice, because a licensed app has 
FCA recourse behind it, and an aboki who is not on that register has none.
When the aboki is still the right tool
He is the right tool when the recipient has no bank account and no wallet. An app can pay a wallet, and a wallet needs no bank. An app can also pay cash at a counter, but a transfer worth more than $200 (about £150 on 4 November) must go to an account. Western Union also says the receiver needs a bank account or a referee, a person with a bank account in Nigeria who can confirm who they are. The aboki works in cash.
He is the right tool when the recipient uses cash only. Not everyone has OPay or PalmPay, and some people do not want it. If cash in hand is what the family needs, cash in hand is what an aboki delivers, quickly.
He is the right tool when the transfer is urgent and any app hold would cost more than the whole margin. If the money has to be in Lagos tonight, the aboki can do that.
When the app is the better tool
For a send to a bank account, check Wise first. On 4 November it delivered more than the aboki's buying rate, and the app leaves a receipt.
For a recipient who uses OPay or PalmPay, an app can pay the wallet directly, with no aboki chain to break. Remitly pays both. Wise can pay both too: pick the name from its bank list. Kuda is a bank as well as an app, so for a Kuda account use Wise and pick Kuda from the same list.
A wallet has limits. Under Central Bank of Nigeria rules from 2017 and 2021, the lowest level of mobile money wallet can hold up to 300,000 naira and the next level can hold up to 500,000 naira. Those were about £162 and £269 on 4 November, so a £300 send can be too big for them, more so if the wallet already has money in it. The top level has no such limit. A wallet firm can set lower limits. Before you send, ask your family member what level their wallet is.
The receipt matters at any amount when the transfer goes wrong at 11pm on a Sunday and there is nobody to call.
For any first-time send, or any send to a new recipient, the app is the sensible tool. Building a paper trail with a licensed provider means the family has a record.
Before you send
The BVN and NIN check still applies. Under a Central Bank of Nigeria directive from December 2023, a basic Tier 1 account or wallet needs a BVN or a NIN linked to it, and Tier 2 and Tier 3 accounts need both. A Tier 1 account with neither can be frozen.
The Central Bank's tier rules from 2013 bar international transfers on Tier 1 accounts and keep Tier 2 accounts for transfers within Nigeria. These rules do not say how this applies to money paid in by a transfer app. So before you send, your family member should ask the bank or wallet firm if the account can take money from abroad.
Banks also flag accounts where the details on the two do not agree. If the recipient account was opened years ago under slightly different name or date-of-birth details than the national ID, an app send can sit at the recipient bank for days. It is a fixable problem, but it needs to be fixed at the branch before the send, not after. This is a common reason a good app transfer stops arriving.
Type the recipient's name exactly as their bank has it, full middle names included. On a Nigerian bank transfer a name mismatch can hold the money for days.
If the send is small (say under £500), to a family member with a working Nigerian bank account, start with Wise. Check LemFi's live rate before you commit. If the recipient uses OPay or PalmPay, send straight to the wallet from Remitly. For a Kuda account, use Wise.
If the send is large, over £1,000, and the recipient has a working account, ask the aboki for his rate on that amount and compare it with what Wise shows. Even if he comes out a little ahead, the licensed app is the safer choice, because a lost transfer costs far more than that small gain.
If the situation fits the aboki, that is a working choice. The street currency exchange still moves cash between two people who need to meet. It costs a lot more if the chain breaks.
The rates and fees here are from Wednesday 4 November 2026, unless the line gives another date. The street rate and the app rate both move, so do the sum again on the day you send.
Corrections
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page opened by saying the aboki's rate was noticeably better than any app, from a time when the gap was ten or fifteen percent. It gave no date for that, so the opening is gone and the page starts with the 4 November answer.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said a lost transfer has no recourse. That went too far, so the line now says only that a lost transfer costs far more than the small gain.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said the Central Bank put the gap between the official and street rates at under 2 percent in August 2026, and that the street gap was about double that. The reports we found compare the official rate with Bureau de Change rates, which is a different gap, and we could not find the bank's own statement. Both lines are gone.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said the order of Wise and the aboki changes from month to month. It can change from day to day, and the page now says so.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said some people with no bank account cannot receive from an app at all. A wallet needs no bank, and a counter can pay cash up to a limit, so the page now gives both.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said WorldRemit pays OPay. WorldRemit's page lists OPay, but its own quote tool showed only bank and airtime to Nigeria, so the line is gone. It also said the aboki has no FCA recourse. That depends on the FCA register: an aboki who is not on it has none, and the page now says so.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page gave the Central Bank of Nigeria's daily wallet limits, 50,000 and 200,000 naira, as limits on a send to a wallet. Those limits are on money going out. The page now gives what the two lowest levels can hold, 300,000 and 500,000 naira.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page said apps pause first sends for a review of a day or two, and that a paper trail makes the next send faster. We found no provider's page that says either, so both are gone.
- 2026-11-05: An earlier version of this page did not say that the Wise, Xoom and Western Union amounts have the fee taken out of the amount sent. Western Union adds its fee on top, so its amounts on £300 and £1,000 could be misread. The figures have not changed, and the page now says how they work.
- 2026-11-04: This page now uses 4 November figures, and its answer changed: at the quoted buying rate, Wise delivered more than the aboki on £300 and on £1,000. An earlier version used figures from 7 August and said the gap between the official and street rates was 8 to 12 percent a year earlier and had shrunk. The records show about 1 to 2 percent in August 2025 and about 4 percent on 7 August 2026. It also used the middle aboki rate of 1,910, when a sender gets his buying rate of 1,900, and gave a size for his margin with no source. It said the Central Bank's pound rate was close to the market rate, when it was about 30 naira lower, and said apps have to price close to the market rate, which no rule requires. It gave 04:20 UK time for the Wise figure, which was 05:20, and called the Western Union sample Monday afternoon, which was Tuesday 4 August in the evening. The Central Bank's table shows about 1,364 naira to the dollar on 6 August and about 1,363 on 5 August, the reverse of what this page said. It said an account without both a BVN and a NIN can be frozen. The December 2023 directive says Tier 1 needs one of the two, Tier 2 and Tier 3 need both, and the freeze is for Tier 1 accounts with neither. It gave three to five working days for a name mismatch and called the BVN problem the single most common reason a transfer stops, with no source for either, and said LemFi was often close to Wise with no dated figure. It said the Friday number tracked these figures week by week, but the link went to one July issue, so that line is cut. The title no longer says "this week". It called Kuda a wallet and said wallet money arrives in minutes. Kuda is paid as a bank account, the page now names the apps that pay OPay and PalmPay, and the timing is cut. It sent readers to OPay and PalmPay with no word on wallet limits, and it did not give the Central Bank's 2013 rules on international transfers for Tier 1 and Tier 2 accounts. Both are now on the page.
- 2026-10-24: An earlier version of this page described a Central Bank rule on BVN and NIN matching. The Central Bank rule, from December 2023, is that both numbers must be linked to the account; the matching check is something banks do in practice. The paragraph now says both plainly.
- 2026-08-07: An earlier version of this page dated the piece "Thursday 7 August 2026" and said the CBN put the dollar at about 1,364 naira on "Wednesday 6 August". 7 August 2026 is a Friday, and 6 August is a Thursday; the CBN's official-window rate on Thursday 6 August was about 1,363 naira per dollar (the 1,364 figure was Wednesday 5 August). The dates and the naira figure have been corrected. The argument of the piece (a parallel-market gap of about two percent) is unchanged.