The two rates the naira has
On 4 November 2026, a dollar had two different prices in naira, depending on where you bought it.
At the CBN window, the rate the 
Central Bank of Nigeria publishes,
a dollar cost about 1,348 naira. It moves a little each day.
On the parallel market, the price two people meet at outside the CBN window,
dealers were selling a dollar for about 1,415 naira.
The gap between the two is about 67 naira per dollar, or about 5 percent. When you send naira out, you are buying dollars or euros, so the higher number costs you more. On 200,000 naira, the CBN rate buys about 148 dollars and the parallel rate about 141. On 1,000,000 naira, it is about 742 dollars against about 707. Real money on a big send, less on a small one. Check today's numbers before you act; the naira moves.
Those are the two prices you can look up. Use them to measure any rate an app or a bank shows you.
What we could see for each route
Your Nigerian bank sells foreign exchange on a Form A for a purpose the Central Bank allows, such as tuition or travel. The bank sets its own rate. We could not read a bank's selling rate on 4 November 2026, so ask for it before you agree.
Grey does send naira out. It says you can send from a
naira balance in the app, in euros to 30 European countries and in pounds to UK bank accounts.
It shows the rate and the fee apart before you confirm. On 4 November 2026 it said the conversion fee
was 1 percent, capped at 6 dollars for euros, pounds and dollars, and that the withdrawal fee varied
by destination.
On 4 November 2026 
Afriex advertised zero fees, so its cost is in the rate.
We could not read a naira-out rate for Grey or Afriex on 4 November 2026. Compare the rate the app shows with the two numbers above before you send.
CadRemit was near the parallel market on 4 November 2026.
USDT on a peer-to-peer exchange sat between the two prices. On
OKX's peer-to-peer market on 4 November 2026,
one USDT cost about 1,380 naira.
Two of the three apps in your phone up top, 
Remitly and 
Lemfi, are
actually built to bring money into Nigeria for people abroad, not to move naira out. If
you sit in Lagos and try to send your salary abroad on them, you will hit friction that
has nothing to do with fees. That is not what they are for.
What you should do depends on what the money is for
The right answer changes with the job.
You are sending a monthly amount from your salary to a family member's European account
Start with Grey. It says it sends euros from a naira balance, and it shows the rate and the fee before you confirm. It also says it operates through banking partners licensed by the Central Bank. Test the first send with a small amount you can afford to see move around, note the euros that actually arrive, then set your monthly rhythm around what you saw.
Afriex says
it also sends euros from Nigeria, and that the money arrives within minutes. Know one thing
before you use it. Afriex is on the Central Bank's
list of International Money Transfer Operators,
but that licence covers money coming into Nigeria. The Central Bank's
2024 guidelines
say such an operator "shall not engage in any outbound transaction". CadRemit's site says it
holds the same licence. We could not find what permission either firm uses to send naira out,
so do not read the licence as cover for this route.
Ask your bank as well. Banks sell foreign exchange for the purposes the
Foreign Exchange Manual
lists, such as tuition and travel. Memorandum 17 of that Manual lets residents send up to 100 percent
of their net income to family, on a Form A. Ask about it by name. It also asks for a Valid
Resident Permit, and the Manual lists it as "Expatriate home remittances", so a bank may refuse
a Nigerian citizen. If your bank says yes, compare its rate and wire fee with what the app shows.
If you already hold dollars in a domiciliary account, your bank can wire those, and you pay its
wire fee with no naira to change.
You are paying tuition for a European or UK university
If the destination is a UK account, the Nigeria-to-UK page covers the UK-side questions your bank cannot help with: how the pounds show up on the recipient's statement, and that a UK bank may ask about the source of the funds. That is a companion to the rate question below, not a replacement for it.
Use your bank and file a Form A. Ask for it by name at the counter. The Central Bank's
Foreign Exchange Manual, dated May 2026, caps tuition at 25,000 US dollars a semester,
and that is more than enough to cover most European undergraduate fees and a good share of
the UK ones. Where the school lists maintenance separately, or the student lives off
campus, maintenance is capped at 5,000 dollars a quarter and goes to the student directly.
Where the school bills both together, all of it goes to the school.
You will pay your bank's rate and a bank fee. That is worth it. The university needs the money to arrive in its own account, with your student ID and a payment reference the finance office recognises, and it needs a record it can point to if the payment is queried. A Form A payment gives you all of that. A transfer app does not, and neither does USDT. Nursery, primary, secondary, foundation and A-Level fees are not eligible for foreign exchange under the Manual. That is a live problem for parents paying those.
You are travelling and want a card that works abroad
Open a domiciliary account with your bank, if you have not already, and get the debit card tied to it. If the account is truly funded in dollars, the card will spend at whatever merchant rate its network gives you. The naira Mastercard variant, funded in naira and converted on the fly, has a limit on international spend, set by each bank. Check your bank's current limit before you fly.
Cleva sells a 
virtual dollar card. It calls it "one card for
all your subscriptions and payments", and says it works wherever Visa is accepted.
You have left Nigeria and there is naira stuck on Gomoney
Gomoney only works inside Nigeria. It cannot send money abroad on its own. Two realistic moves.
Move the balance to a mainstream Nigerian bank account, GTB, Access, Zenith, First Bank, UBA or Fidelity, one you still have access to on your app. Once the money is there you have the whole toolkit above. This works if you kept access to the app and your Nigerian SIM still receives one-time codes.
If you did not, and the amount is worth the trouble, use a trusted friend still in Nigeria. Send the naira to them from Gomoney, they receive euros or pounds for you from the receiving-side app of your choice, and you settle up between yourselves. This is the aboki route: two people agreeing a rate they can both live with, one holding the naira, one holding the currency the world outside wants. The trust bar is high; do not attempt it with someone you would not lend the amount to in cash.
If the balance is small, say forty or fifty euros equivalent or less, write it off. The fees and the time to move a small stuck balance often cost more than the balance is worth, and treating it as a lesson is cheaper than treating it as a puzzle.
A note on the USDT route
Some people buy USDT on a peer-to-peer market with naira, move it to a foreign exchange, sell it there for euros and withdraw to their IBAN. The USDT price is only part of the cost. You also pay the withdrawal fee of the second exchange, and you give your own time.
Exchanges take appeals if a trade goes wrong, but no ombudsman stands behind the trade. The person on the other side is another person, not a company. Binance ended its direct naira pairs in March 2024, and its peer-to-peer market showed no naira offers on 4 November 2026. Bybit and OKX still showed them.
If you already know your way around a peer-to-peer exchange, this can cost less than an app on a large send. If you do not, the learning curve is worth more than what you might save.
Corrections
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version had the rate gap the wrong way round: it said parallel-priced apps leave you more euros than your bank and that the bank route loses two to three percent, when each naira buys more at the CBN rate. The figures now date from 4 November, and the lines saying the CBN rate is a ceiling every bank must price at, that Wise and Remitly price at it, and that the gap had narrowed are cut.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version said the Central Bank raised the tuition cap on 1 June 2026, up from 15,000 dollars. The Manual is dated May 2026 and gives neither that date nor the old figure, so both are cut.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version said maintenance is always wired to the student; that holds only where it is listed separately or the student lives off campus. It also said school fees below university have no formal route; the Manual says they are not eligible for foreign exchange, and the page now says that.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version said Afriex's Central Bank licence meant this route was "not the wild edge" and told salary senders to use Afriex first. That licence covers money coming into Nigeria, and the Central Bank's guidelines say such an operator "shall not engage in any outbound transaction", so the comfort is cut and the first advice is now Grey.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version said every app picks one of two prices, that Afriex, Grey and Pesa price near the parallel market and that banks sit near the CBN rate and add a margin to it. We could not read those rates, so these lines are cut, along with Pesa and the page's closing lines built on them.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version said Grey is built to receive euros and dollars and needs them brought in first, and called "zero fee" a pitch on all these apps. Grey says it sends from a naira balance, in euros to 30 European countries, and it shows a fee. It also said the Central Bank suspended naira pairs on the main crypto exchanges, when Binance ended its own.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version said USDT moves at the same parallel rate as Afriex, that the route costs less than a dollar and has no customer service, that Binance acted under Central Bank pressure and that peer-to-peer trading is what remains there. USDT sat between the two prices on 4 November, exchanges take appeals, and Binance showed no naira offers, so these lines are cut or changed.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version said a dollar card spends within a small margin of the real price, that naira cards have a quarterly cap, and that Sudo Africa sells virtual cards that suit a Netflix bill but not a main travel card. We have no source for these, so they are cut or narrowed. It also said big UK banks run a source-of-funds check since October 2024 and named a wire-timing pattern; both are cut for the same reason.
- 2026-11-04: An earlier version called USDT the cheapest route on a large send and gave a bank wire fee of 25 to 50 dollars and a naira card cap of 500 to 1,000 dollars a quarter. All three are cut because no source supports them today.