ACH, wire or FedNow: which one can actually pay you in Nigeria?

ACH, FedNow and a US domestic wire can all reach the dollar account a Nigerian app gives you. An international wire over SWIFT usually can't. Grey, Daya Borders, Cleva and Raenest all issue US account and routing details, and the rail your client picks changes what you lose: Upwork charges $0 by ACH and $30 by wire.

Those names all sound like jargon your client's finance person uses, and they decide two things that matter to you: what comes off the payment, and whether it arrives at all. If you haven't settled on a way to get paid yet, start with how to get paid by international clients in Nigeria. The rest of this is the rails themselves.

What is an ACH transfer, and who can send you one?

An ACH transfer is the United States' domestic bank transfer, run by an organisation called Nacha, and Nacha says the network "reaches all U.S. bank and credit union accounts". That one sentence is the whole story: it reaches US accounts, which is why a US company can pay you this way and your client's bank in Lagos or Berlin can't.

A payment coming into the US from abroad over this network is a different animal with its own name, an International ACH Transaction, and Nacha requires it to pass through what it calls a Gateway Operator. Somebody has to have built that bridge for your country. The Federal Reserve runs its own cross-border ACH service and it covers Mexico and Panama only, with the Fed saying the service "will be discontinued by year-end 2026".

What it means for you: if your client is a US company paying through a US payroll or accounting system, ACH is the cheap, normal route and it will reach your app's dollar details. If your client banks anywhere else, they can't send you an ACH no matter what their accountant types into the form, and the payment will come as something else.

Three things about ACH are worth knowing before you promise a client a date:

• It isn't instant. Nacha estimates 80% of ACH payments settle in one banking day or less, and same-day ACH can land in a few hours.
• It doesn't run at weekends. ACH settles four times a banking day and follows the US banking calendar, so a Friday evening payment is a Monday problem.
• It can be pulled back. Nacha allows a sender to reverse a payment for a duplicate, the wrong recipient, the wrong amount or the wrong date, and the reversal has to reach your bank within 5 banking days of settlement.

What is a wire transfer, and why does it cost more?

Two different payments both get called a wire, and only one of them is expensive. A US domestic wire runs on Fedwire, the Federal Reserve's own system, and the Fed says those transfers are "immediate, final, and irrevocable once processed". An international wire is the other one, and it's the one that arrives smaller than it left.

An international wire moves over SWIFT, and SWIFT is a messaging network rather than a payment one. Your client's bank sends a message; the money itself is passed along a chain of banks that hold accounts with each other, called correspondent banks, and each one in the chain can take a cut on the way through. Nobody tells you in advance how many banks are in your chain.

The companies that handle these payments every day are the ones who publish what that costs, and their figures line up:

• Grey says "one to three intermediary (correspondent) banks may each deduct $10 to $30 from the transfer amount" (Grey on receiving an international wire).
• Remote.com puts "correspondent bank fees ranging from $20 to $50" on a dollar payment to a bank outside the US, and says plainly that it doesn't control them (Remote's contractor payout fees).
• Eversend puts wire and lifting fees at "$25 to $50 per payment" and describes the correspondent deductions as "taken in transit" (Eversend on what a SWIFT transfer costs).

What it means for you: an international wire is the only route where money disappears after your client has already paid it. Your app's receiving fee is printed on a page and you can check it beforehand. The correspondent deductions aren't, and they come off the amount in transit, which is why a $1,000 invoice can land as $950 with everybody's paperwork saying $1,000 was sent.

What are RTP and FedNow, and will you ever see one?

RTP and FedNow are the two instant payment systems inside the United States, and you'll meet FedNow far more often than RTP. Both move money in seconds, both are US-only, and the Federal Reserve says FedNow "supports only domestic payments between U.S. depository institutions". Neither reaches a bank outside America.

RTP is run by a bank-owned company called The Clearing House, which launched it in 2017 and caps a transfer at $10 million, with settlement "final and irrevocable". FedNow is the Federal Reserve's own version, and its limit rose from $1 million to $10 million in November 2025. Neither is everywhere yet: RTP had 1,378 participating institutions as of September 2026, out of roughly 9,000 US banks and credit unions, and the Fed says signing up for FedNow "will happen gradually".

What it means for you: FedNow is worth asking about, because Grey and Cleva both accept it on their US accounts and it lands in seconds rather than days. RTP is not worth asking about, because not one of the Nigerian apps in this article mentions it anywhere.

How do ACH, wires, RTP and FedNow compare?

There are five rails worth knowing about, and what separates them is who's allowed to send you one and whether the money can be taken back after it lands.

Which rails can a Nigerian app's dollar account actually receive?

ACH and a US domestic wire, mostly. An international wire over SWIFT is the one that gets refused, and four of these companies say so in their own words on their own help pages. That's the single most useful thing to check before you send your account details to a client abroad, because a payment on the wrong rail doesn't arrive expensively, it doesn't arrive.

• Cleva, in its help centre on 28 May 2026: "SWIFT Transfers (from non-U.S. banks) are not currently supported", and wire is "Only supported by U.S. banks" (Cleva on receiving USD deposits).
• Eversend, on 11 September 2026: "USD Virtual accounts with Eversend do not currently support SWIFT payments, only ACH and US domestic wires" (Eversend on its virtual bank accounts).
• Chipper Cash, on 14 April 2025: the account "does not support swift payments. It only supports ACH transfers" (Chipper Cash's USD virtual account FAQs). The same article publishes a $25 wire receiving fee, so ask Chipper Cash which of the two applies to you before a client sends one.
• Grey, on 9 August 2026: "The US bank account on Grey only receives funds via ACH, FEDNOW and WIRE TRANSFER" (Grey on ACH, FedNow and wire), and its own guide to receiving an international wire says dollars arrive by ACH or FedNow, "Not through the traditional SWIFT network".

Raenest is the awkward one. Its page about its USD account lists only ACH and local wire transfers as the ways money comes in, while giving you a SWIFT code and saying the account takes "both domestic and international payments", and a third Raenest page prices a SWIFT receipt at 0.35% with a $50 minimum. So ask Raenest directly rather than reading it off a page.

There's a second question underneath this one that almost nobody checks, and it's about who your client is rather than which rail they use. Several of these accounts will only take money from a company.

1. Payoneer's US receiving account, in its terms and conditions of September 2026, "will only accept funds received via NACHA credit transfers from corporate U.S. bank accounts", and only from payers Payoneer has approved. Its older US terms put it more bluntly still: "Payoneer will block Credits initiated by any individual."
2. Eversend: "Payments sent from individual third-party accounts (not registered businesses) will be rejected and returned."
3. Grey caps what an individual can send you: "Individual third-party deposits are limited to less than $4,000", with no limit on deposits from business accounts (Grey's guidelines for receiving payments).

So before you hand your account and routing number to anyone, get two answers out of your own app: which rails reach this account, and will it take a payment from a person rather than a company. Both answers change what you can safely promise a client.

What does the same $1,000 cost by ACH and by wire?

On $1,000, the rail is worth more than the app. The same payment into the same Grey account costs $8 by ACH and $20 by domestic wire. At Chipper Cash it's $7.50 against $25. At Cleva it's $3 against $10, and at Eversend $5.39 against $14.90. Upwork is the cleanest example of all, because it charges nothing to send to a US bank account by ACH and $30 for a wire.

Two notes on reading that table. Daya Borders takes nothing from an incoming dollar payment, so the rail doesn't change the fee. And Raenest and Cleva each state their receiving fee more than one way on their own live pages, so the figures above give both readings. On a $1,000 ACH payment, Raenest's three pages produce $4, $8 and $5.

Worth keeping in proportion, though. A 1% difference in the rate you're given when you convert $1,000 to naira is worth $10, which is more than the gap between most of the rows above. The live comparison on this page shows where Daya Borders sits against other apps today, and it won't always be at the top. Quote the same payment in two apps and compare the naira you'd actually receive, not the fee line.

Where does Daya Borders fit?

Daya Borders takes 0% on an incoming dollar payment with no cap, against 0.8% capped at $10 at Grey and $20 flat for a domestic wire at Grey. It gives you US account and routing details in your own name, plus euro details on a real euro bank account, and it has no fees at all today.

The 0% has no conditions attached, so it reads the same on $200 and on $20,000, and it applies to euros as well as dollars. You can hold the dollars and convert when you choose rather than at the moment the payment lands, and you can send out to a Nigerian bank account, to an international dollar account or to another Daya Borders user.

Where Daya Borders isn't the pick: it has no card yet. If what you need is a dollar card for subscriptions, Grey charges $5 to create one and $1 per load, Cleva and Raenest charge $3, and Chipper Cash charges $5. On receiving and holding, which is what this article is about, Daya Borders charges nothing on either side of the rail.

What should you tell a client who's about to pay you?

Ask them one question first: are they paying from a US bank account or from somewhere else? Everything else follows from that answer, and it takes about a line in an email. Then work through this:

1. If they're a US company, ask for ACH or FedNow. Give them the account number and the routing number, and don't give them a SWIFT code, because neither rail uses one.
2. If they're outside the US, the payment will come as an international wire, so check your app takes one before you send any details at all.
3. If they're paying you personally rather than through a company, say so to your app first. Payoneer and Eversend both refuse payments from individuals, and Grey limits them to under $4,000.
4. If a wire is the only option, agree who pays the correspondent charges before the invoice goes out, because $20 to $50 off a $500 payment is a different conversation after the fact.
5. Write the rail on the invoice. "Pay by ACH to the account and routing number below" removes a week of back and forth with somebody's finance team.

What if your client can only send an international wire?

Then a domiciliary account at a Nigerian bank is the route that works, because it does receive one. A domiciliary account is simply a bank account held in a foreign currency, and GTBank describes receiving foreign currency transfers through its correspondent banks into customers' domiciliary accounts, publishing its own SWIFT code to be used for it. Access Bank says the same on its domiciliary account page.

The charges are set centrally and they're worth knowing. The CBN's Guide to Charges, the document that caps what Nigerian banks can charge you, prices an "Inward Telegraphic/SWIFT and other transfers expressed in foreign currency" at "No charge". Taking the money out again is where the cost sits: the same document caps the withdrawal commission on a domiciliary account at "0.05% of transaction value or $10, whichever is lower".

"No charge" isn't free, though, because it only binds the Nigerian bank at the end of the chain. The correspondent banks in the middle have already taken theirs before the money gets there. For the fuller comparison of the two routes, read domiciliary account vs fintech USD account, and for how long each one takes, how long an international payment takes to reach Nigeria.