Fincra API alternatives for Nigerian developers

Fincra (fincra.com) is a Nigerian payments API for collecting naira and paying out across Africa. If you're moving off it, the APIs that do the same jobs are Paystack, Daya API, Flutterwave, Monnify, Squad and Yellow Card. Daya API charges 1% capped at ₦100 on a naira deposit, against Fincra's 1% capped at ₦1,000 on a virtual account collection.

What does Fincra's API actually do?

Fincra's API collects money by card, bank transfer, direct debit and virtual account, and pays out to bank accounts and mobile wallets in more than 100 countries. Fincra also converts between currencies and sends stablecoins on-chain. Fincra onboards businesses rather than individuals, and its own documentation says it won't issue a multicurrency account to a fintech with no licence.

Fincra's naira virtual accounts are NUBAN-compliant, which means they look and behave like an ordinary Nigerian bank account number to whoever is paying you. Funds transfers into them are instant, per Fincra's docs. A permanent virtual account needs a BVN, and for a company the BVN has to match one of the directors or shareholders on the CAC record. That last requirement catches people out, so it's worth checking before you build.

The pieces a Fincra integration is usually made of:

• Pay-in by card, bank transfer, direct debit, virtual account and checkout
• Payout to bank accounts and mobile wallets, same-currency or cross-currency
• A conversion API and a quote API for live payout rates
• Digital asset payouts in USDT, USDC and cNGN
• Webhooks for payouts, collections, mandates, charges, conversions and virtual accounts
• A sandbox that takes test documents rather than real ones

What does Fincra charge?

Fincra's full price list isn't on fincra.com/pricing, which carries no figures. It sits in a sheet linked from the word “here” in Fincra's developer docs FAQ, under the question “Does Fincra have a pricing list?”. That sheet puts card and bank transfer collections at 1.4% capped at ₦2,000, virtual account collections at 1% capped at ₦1,000, and naira payouts at ₦10, ₦25 or ₦50 depending on size.

The figures from that sheet, read on 16 October 2026:

• Naira collections by card, bank transfer or Pay Attitude: 1.4%, capped at ₦2,000
• Naira collections into a virtual account: 1%, capped at ₦1,000
• Naira payouts to a bank account or mobile wallet: ₦10 up to ₦5,000, ₦25 from ₦5,001 to ₦50,000, ₦50 from ₦50,000
• Currency conversion inside the wallets: 0.5% on majors, with a 1.0% FX markup
• Multicurrency virtual accounts: free per account issued, but a monthly minimum fee of $2,000 up to 2,000 accounts and $5,000 from 2,000 to 5,000

That monthly minimum is the figure most likely to change your mind, and it's the one nothing else written about Fincra mentions. A platform issuing a handful of dollar or euro accounts pays $2,000 a month before it processes anything, which works out at $24,000 a year of fixed cost. On Fincra's own numbers the per-account fee is zero, so the whole charge is the floor.

Fincra also states a USD card acquiring fee of 3.8% per transaction, a chargeback fee of €15 on a euro payment or $35 on a dollar one, and virtual account funding fees of 0.1% with a €10 minimum on SEPA and SWIFT, 0.1% with a £10 minimum on FAST, BACS and SWIFT, and 0.1% with a £25 minimum on CHAPS. Naira funding is free on that same page.

One warning before you build a model on any of this. Fincra states its headline naira collection cap three different ways on three of its own live pages: ₦2,000 and ₦1,000 in the pricing sheet, ₦1,000 on its pay-in page, and ₦300 on a blog post from 10 July 2025 that's still live and still promoting a ₦300 cap. The pricing sheet is the most specific and most complete of the three, so that's the one quoted here, but a ₦300 cap and the sheet's ₦1,000 virtual account cap are more than three times apart. Confirm your rate with Fincra in writing before you price anything off it.

Which APIs can replace Fincra for naira collections and payouts?

Six APIs collect naira and pay naira out, and all six state what they charge: Paystack, Daya API, Flutterwave, Monnify, Squad and Yellow Card. They split along one line that matters more than price. Paystack, Monnify and Squad are naira-in, naira-out gateways. Fincra, Daya API, Flutterwave and Yellow Card also settle on-chain in stablecoins, so they can take naira in and give you USDC or USDT out.

Three more names come up in this search and none of them can go in that table. Korapay, now trading as Kora, is a genuine Fincra competitor and publishes no fee on any page reachable today. Juicyway's pricing page returns an error and its developer docs don't document naira collection or payout at all. Anchor and Lenco both run on partner banks and publish account pricing rather than API pricing. Transak and Onramp.money publish no naira support, so neither is a replacement for a naira build.

Why does the cap matter more than the percentage?

On naira collections every one of these providers charges a percentage with a ceiling, so the ceiling decides who is cheapest at the size you actually process. Squad has the lowest percentage at 0.25% and a ₦1,000 ceiling. Daya API has a higher percentage at 1% and a ₦100 ceiling. Squad is cheaper on small collections and Daya API is cheaper on large ones, and they cross at about ₦40,000.

The same ₦50,000 collection, priced by each provider's own published schedule:

1. Daya API: ₦100, because 1% of ₦50,000 is ₦500 and the cap is ₦100
2. Squad: ₦125
3. Paystack: ₦300, at its virtual account cap
4. Fincra: ₦500
5. Monnify: ₦750, before VAT
6. Flutterwave: ₦1,000, before VAT

Move that collection to ₦500,000 and the order changes again. Daya API stays at ₦100 and Paystack stays at ₦300, because both have hit their ceilings. Squad reaches its ₦1,000 ceiling, Fincra reaches its ₦1,000 ceiling, and Flutterwave has no ceiling on that line at all, so 2% of ₦500,000 is ₦10,000 before VAT. If your average collection is small, the percentage is what you feel. If it's large, the ceiling is the only number that matters.

The same arithmetic on the receiving side of a dollar account works out in detail on our comparison of Nigerian dollar account apps, so it isn't repeated here.

Which of these settle naira into stablecoins?

Four of the seven settle on-chain in stablecoins, and the difference between them is chain coverage. Daya API's documentation lists USDC and USDT across ten chains with the supported direction stated for each one. Fincra publishes USDT on TRC20, ERC20, Solana and BEP20, USDC on ERC20 and Solana, plus cNGN. Yellow Card publishes USDT and USDC across 30 or more chains. Flutterwave publishes USDT, USDC and RLUSD.

Fincra's stablecoin support is worth a second look if you've already looked once and concluded it has none. Nothing on fincra.com mentions stablecoins. The digital asset payout page sits inside Fincra's developer documentation, under supported currencies, and that's the only place it appears. If your reason for leaving Fincra is that it can't settle on-chain, check that page first, because it can.

Direction is the thing to check across all four. A chain that accepts a deposit doesn't always support a withdrawal. Daya API's documentation states this per asset and per chain, so USDC can be deposited on Ethereum but not withdrawn there, while Solana and Aptos take both directions for both assets. Build against the live supported-chains response rather than a static list, whichever provider you pick.

Where does Daya API fit?

Daya API is the naira-to-stablecoin option with the lowest collection ceiling of the seven, at 1% capped at ₦100. It takes naira in through virtual accounts, settles to your Daya balance, a naira balance, a customer's naira balance or an on-chain address, and pays naira out to Nigerian bank accounts. Its published fees are in its developer documentation, which is the price list.

What Daya API's documentation states, read on 16 October 2026:

• Naira deposit: 1%, capped at ₦100
• Naira transfer out: 1% capped at ₦100, or ₦20 below ₦1,000, with a ₦100 minimum transfer
• Dollar virtual account deposit: 0.2%
• Dollar transfers: 0.2%
• Crypto withdrawal: $0.10 by default, $0.20 on Ethereum, $1.00 on Tron
• USDC and USDT across ten chains, with the supported direction stated for each
• Rates firm on a rate-locked funding account, regenerated about every ten minutes and expiring about thirty minutes after creation
• A developer fee you set from 0% to 50%, deducted before the customer's final amount rather than added on top

Where Daya API isn't the cheapest pick, and it's worth saying plainly: naira payouts. Daya API charges 1% capped at ₦100, so a ₦100,000 payout costs ₦100. Monnify charges ₦40 on that payout, Fincra and Paystack charge ₦50, and Yellow Card charges a flat ₦100. If your platform's volume is mostly outbound naira and you never touch a stablecoin, a flat-fee gateway will cost you less and you should use one.

Where Daya API earns its place is the other three columns. The ₦100 collection ceiling is the lowest of the seven, which matters most on large collections. The ten published chains with per-direction detail are the widest coverage of any provider here that also runs naira rails. And the developer fee lets you take your own cut inside the transaction rather than billing for it separately, which is a feature a marketplace or a payroll product usually has to build. Set against a $2,000 monthly floor on a multicurrency account elsewhere, those three are what decide the build.

What won't Fincra do?

Three limits in Fincra's own words are worth checking against your roadmap before you commit, because each one has sent somebody looking for an alternative. Fincra states that bulk payments are not currently available, that it onboards businesses rather than individuals, and that it won't issue a multicurrency account to a fintech with no licence.

1. Bulk payouts: “Making bulk payment is currently not available”, per Fincra's own FAQ. If you run payroll or mass payouts, you'll be looping single calls.
2. Unlicensed fintechs: “Fincra does not issue these accounts to a fintech with no licence”. An early-stage Nigerian fintech without its own licence can be turned down at onboarding.
3. Entity type: Fincra onboards businesses, not individuals, and its documentation says US-registered companies aren't accepted. Nigerian-registered businesses are.

Fincra's public developer forum is also worth looking at before you rely on it for support. Of the ten most recent threads on docs.fincra.com/discuss, one reads as a genuine integration question and the rest are off-topic or promotional. If community support matters to your team, budget for the account manager instead.

Which Fincra alternative should you use?

There isn't one answer, because these providers are cheapest at different sizes and only some of them touch stablecoins. Pick by the shape of your volume rather than by the headline percentage.

• Mostly small naira collections through virtual accounts: Squad, at 0.25% capped at ₦1,000, is cheapest below about ₦40,000 a collection.
• Mostly large naira collections: Daya API, at 1% capped at ₦100, is cheapest above about ₦40,000 a collection.
• Card checkout as the main flow: Paystack, at 1.5% plus ₦100 capped at ₦2,000, with the ₦100 waived under ₦2,500.
• Mostly outbound naira payouts: Monnify, at ₦40 above ₦50,000, is the cheapest published naira payout here.
• Naira in, stablecoin out, on a wide range of chains: Yellow Card for breadth of chains, Daya API for the lower collection ceiling and the built-in revenue share.
• Collections and payouts across several African currencies in one integration: Fincra still covers more corridors than anyone else on this list, and that's the reason to stay.

Whichever you pick, pull the fee schedule from the provider's API at runtime rather than hardcoding it. Daya API's documentation says this outright about its own figures, and it's good advice everywhere: every provider on this page has changed a number in the last year, and one of them currently states its headline cap three different ways.