Send Money from the UK to Nigeria

Measured on the full cost — the transfer fee plus the exchange-rate margin — Wise is cheapest on this corridor at £1,000, across the 2 providers we hold checked figures for. LemFi, WorldRemit, Remitly and Ria Money Transfer advertise no transfer fee here, which looks cheaper and often is not: a provider with no fee recovers it in the rate, and the margin is usually the larger of the two costs. The cheapest provider also changes with the amount you send, so compare the final sum that arrives in Nigerian nairas rather than the headline fee.

At £1,000, Wise is the cheapest of the 2 providers priced at that amount on this corridor: about £6.07 all in, or 0.61% of the amount sent. Western Union is next at about £29.39. That is the fee plus the exchange-rate margin that applied to a transfer of that size — priced at £1,000 specifically, not worked out from a measurement taken at some other amount. It covers a bank transfer; cash pickup and mobile wallet payouts are priced separately. The margins were measured by Wise's comparison service rather than published by the providers themselves, and other providers here may be cheaper and are not priced this way.

Delivery ranges from minutes to a few business days depending on the provider and payout method. LemFi, Taptap Send and WorldRemit can deliver within minutes when you pay by debit card. Bank-funded and economy transfers typically take one to three business days but usually cost less. Transfers sent outside banking hours or over a weekend may not settle until the next working day.

Across the providers we compare, the available payout methods are bank deposit, cash pickup, mobile wallet, airtime top-up and card payout. The most widely used options in Nigeria are bank deposit to local naira accounts. Most digital providers pay directly into Nigerian bank accounts in naira, which is usually cheaper and faster than cash pickup. Not every provider supports every method, so check the table above before you commit.

No. Sendwave, Taptap Send, WorldRemit, Remitly, Western Union, Ria Money Transfer and MoneyGram offer cash pickup in Nigeria, so your recipient can collect the funds with valid photo ID and the transfer reference number. That said, bank deposit to local naira accounts generally cost less than cash collection.

Providers rarely give you the mid-market rate — the reference rate you see on Google or Reuters. Instead they add a margin, typically between 0.4% and 4%, and keep the difference. That margin is often larger than the visible transfer fee, which is why a "no fee" service can still be more expensive overall. For GBP to NGN, compare the quoted rate against the mid-market rate to see the real spread you are paying.

Yes, provided you use a licensed provider. Every service listed on this page is regulated in the UK under the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which requires safeguarding of customer funds and identity verification. Send only to people you know personally, keep your transfer reference private, and be sceptical of anyone pressuring you to send money urgently to someone you have not met.

Yes. Each provider sets its own transfer limits, which vary by how much identity verification you have completed and how you pay. Larger transfers may require additional documentation such as proof of source of funds. For transfers above roughly £10,000, a specialist foreign-exchange broker will often beat an app on rate.

Every provider here that names a payout currency pays in naira. None of their UK pages offers payout into a US dollar domiciliary account as a live option, so if your recipient wants dollars this list will not give them to you. Two providers publish opposite accounts of the rule behind that. Sendwave states that dollar remittances are no longer permitted by Nigeria's central bank; a WorldRemit blog post from December 2020 states the reverse, that payouts had to be in dollars rather than naira. We have not verified either against the central bank and are not repeating either as current law — but a corridor where two major providers publish contradictory regulatory claims is worth knowing about before you rely on what one of them says. Published per-transfer limits from the UK differ enormously: Ria's calculator accepts 1 to 8,000 GBP, Western Union states 50,000 GBP through a bank and 4,000 GBP every three days by credit card, Remitly states up to 75,000 GBP and Taptap Send states 99,000 GBP. On a large transfer the ceiling decides the shortlist before the price does. Nigeria itself does not cap what a recipient can receive into a bank account — Taptap Send states there are no specific limits set by banks in Nigeria — so the binding constraint on this corridor is the sender's limit, not the recipient's. A transfer can be delivered and still not be visible. Wise notes that NIBSS, Nigeria's inter-bank settlement system, may take up to 24 hours to confirm a payment's status, and Taptap Send warns funds can take up to two working days to display even though most transfers deliver in under three minutes. Read the zero-fee claims carefully: LemFi's own support pages state that transfers after the first to a new country may attract a fee, WorldRemit's fee-free offer is scoped to naira sends, and Ria's zero fee is a first-transfer promotional code. Only Taptap Send states a no-fee position for this corridor with no condition attached. The reason this corridor now has real competition is a deliberate Central Bank of Nigeria policy push, and it is worth understanding because it changed what a formal transfer is worth. Formal monthly inflows to Nigeria went from about $250 million in early 2024 to $600 million by September 2024 and $947 million in July 2026, with the central bank targeting $1 billion a month. The CBN got there by licensing 14 new international money transfer operators, letting them access naira liquidity at the central bank window, requiring them to pay recipients directly in naira, giving them freedom to set their own exchange rates, and settling same-day for transactions completed before noon. The practical effect for a UK sender is that the formal rate has converged much closer to what informal channels offer, which is exactly why several providers here can afford to charge no fee at all and compete on the rate instead.