How to pay international suppliers from Nigeria

You can pay an overseas supplier from Nigeria through one of two routes: your bank, where the CBN's published charges start at ₦3,000 to register a Form M plus 0.5% commission on the transfer, or a business multi-currency account like Verto, Daya Business, Juicyway or Grey Business, which pay suppliers out of a foreign currency balance you already hold.

What you're paying for decides which route you can use. Goods coming into Nigeria need a Form M registered before your supplier ships. Services, software and licence fees don't, and those go on a Form A instead. Get that wrong and the payment stops at your bank, whichever app you were planning to use.

Daya Business holds all three of dollars, pounds and euros today and pays out on four rails, bank transfer, wire, ACH and on-chain in USDT or USDC, where Grey Business has dollars live and lists pounds and euros as coming soon.

This guide covers what each route costs, the paperwork that decides whether your bank will release the money, and two well-known apps worth checking before you plan around them.

What does a Nigerian bank charge to pay a foreign supplier?

The Central Bank of Nigeria publishes a ceiling every Nigerian bank has to work within. On its Guide to Charges, effective 1 January 2020, registering a Form M costs ₦3,000, establishing a letter of credit costs 1% of face value for up to 180 days, and an outward transfer costs 0.5% commission plus the offshore bank's own charges.

The full set of trade charges in that guide:

• Form M processing: ₦3,000, plus the maintenance fee on Form NXP as advised by the CBN.
• Form M amendment, revalidation or extension: negotiable, up to a maximum of ₦5,000 each.
• Letter of credit establishment: 1% of face value up to 180 days, 1.25% up to 270 days, 1.5% up to 360 days.
• Letter of credit amendment: ₦2,000 per application. Extension: ₦5,000 flat.
• Bills for collection: negotiable, up to a maximum of 0.5% of the bill value.
• Outward transfer: SWIFT cost recovery plus 0.5% commission on the transfer, plus associated offshore bank charges.
• Inward transfers: no charge.

What it means for you: the first six of those are numbers you can budget for. The seventh isn't. "Plus associated offshore bank charges" is the part with no ceiling on it, because it covers whatever the correspondent banks between your bank and your supplier's bank decide to deduct on the way through. That's the usual reason a supplier says they received less than the invoice while your own statement says the full amount left.

Two things worth knowing about that guide. It's a maximum rather than a price list, so your own bank may charge less and should tell you what it charges before you sign. And it's dated 1 January 2020, which is the most recent edition the CBN has published, so check your bank's current tariff alongside it rather than treating these as today's numbers.

Do you need a Form M to pay a supplier abroad?

You need a Form M if you're importing physical goods into Nigeria, and it has to be registered before your supplier ships. You need a Form A instead if you're paying for something that isn't goods, such as software, consultancy, school fees or an air ticket. First Bank sets both out alongside Form Q, which covers small-scale importers up to $20,000 a quarter.

The practical requirements, from the banks' own trade pages:

1. A proforma invoice from your supplier, valid for up to 90 days.
2. An electronic insurance certificate, which Sterling Bank says has to cover 110% of the invoice value.
3. A tax identification number for the business.
4. NAFDAC or SONCAP certification where the goods need it.
5. A registered Form M before shipment, valid for 180 days on general merchandise and 365 days on plant and machinery, with extensions possible.

What it means for you: the sequence matters more than the paperwork. If your supplier ships before the Form M is registered, your bank can refuse to fund the payment and your goods can sit at the port while you sort it out. Register first, ship second, pay third.

What does "Valid for FX" mean on a Form M?

"Valid for FX" means your bank can sell you foreign currency against that Form M. "Not Valid for FX" means the Form M is approved for the import but you have to fund the payment yourself, from a domiciliary balance or your own offshore funds. Sterling Bank explains the distinction on its Form M FAQ, and it's the single line that decides whether your bank can source dollars for you.

What it means for you: if your Form M comes back marked Not Valid for FX, no amount of chasing the bank will produce dollars against it. You either fund it from your own foreign currency, which is where a business account that already holds dollars earns its keep, or you go back and apply on a Valid for FX basis.

Nigerian importers also lose time to the prefix on the form. Sterling notes that a BA prefix and a CB prefix mark different funding bases, so ask your trade desk which one your application will carry before you submit it rather than after.

Why would your bank decline a domiciliary transfer?

Your bank will decline a domiciliary transfer if the goods were supplied inside Nigeria by a Nigerian company. Sterling Bank calls this the dollarization policy: foreign currency isn't meant to settle a domestic trade, so a transfer request that looks like one gets turned down even when the money is sitting in your own account.

Two other things Sterling Bank's own FAQ answers, which almost nothing written for Nigerian importers covers:

• Limits on a domiciliary transfer usually only apply where the funds came in as cash. Otherwise you can transfer up to the available balance.
• A returned transfer often comes back short, because the beneficiary bank and the correspondent banks each take their charges before the remainder is credited to you.

What it means for you: keep the documents that prove the trade is genuinely cross-border. Sterling lists a customer instruction, a registered Form M for goods, and invoices for services. A payment held up at the bank is almost always a documentation problem rather than a liquidity one.

What do the business account apps charge?

Verto is the only one of these that publishes a full price list. On its Nigeria pricing page, plans run $0 to $35 a month, international collections cost 0.5% on the free plan, and an international payment out costs $25. Grey publishes a fee page too, updated on 2 October 2026, though it doesn't separate business accounts from personal ones. Juicyway publishes no figures at all.

The trap on Verto is worth naming, because it's easy to quote the wrong number. Verto serves a different pricing page depending on where you are, and the Nigeria page and the United States page disagree on four of five lines. On the Nigeria page a Lite plan is $15 a month and an international payment is $25. On the US page the same plan is $25 and the payment is $20. Read the Nigeria page.

Verto's published figures for a Nigerian business, checked on 5 October 2026:

• Plans: Free $0 a month, Lite $15, Emerging $35, Enterprise custom.
• Domestic naira collections: free on every plan.
• International collections: 0.5% on Free, 0.5% then 0.3% above $10,000 on Lite.
• FX spread: 0.6% on Free and 0.5% on Lite for developed markets, and a 0.5% to 2% band for what Verto calls exotic markets. The naira sits in that band, and Verto doesn't say where.
• International payment out: $25 on every published plan.

Grey's published deposit and withdrawal fees, from the page it updated on 2 October 2026, are a useful second reference even though Grey doesn't split business from personal: 0.8% to receive by ACH with a $2 minimum and a $10 cap, $20 flat on a Fedwire, $25 to send out by SWIFT, and conversion charged in bands from 0% to 1%.

Which of these can actually do the job, compared on what each one publishes about itself:

The links to each of those price pages are above, in the paragraphs on Verto and Grey, and Juicyway describes its own business transfers in detail without putting a number on any of them.

Where does Daya Business fit?

Daya Business suits a CAC-registered Nigerian company that wants to collect in foreign currency and pay suppliers out of the same account. Its own page says a business gets account details in the business's name for dollars, pounds and euros, can hold all three, can move between dollars and naira, and can pay out by bank transfer, wire, ACH or on-chain in USDT and USDC.

Where that helps on a supplier payment:

• Holding the currency you'll pay in. If your Form M comes back Not Valid for FX, you need your own dollars, and a dollar balance you already hold is the thing that unblocks it.
• Choosing your rail by what the supplier accepts. A wire suits a supplier who wants money in their own bank. A stablecoin payout suits one who already takes USDT or USDC and wants it the same day.
• Account details in the company's name rather than a director's, which is what an accountant and an auditor will both ask for.

Where Daya Business isn't the answer. Verto publishes a full per-plan price list and Grey publishes a dated fee page, so if you want to model your costs line by line before you open anything, those two give you more to work with today. And if you need a letter of credit, that's a bank product, so a bank is where you go for it.

One thing to do whichever you pick, because it's true of every provider in this market: compare the naira you'd actually end up with on a test amount, not the fee line. The fee is printed and the rate moves, and on a large supplier payment the rate is the bigger number of the two.

Can a Nigerian business use Wise or LemFi to pay suppliers?

LemFi can't be used by a Nigerian business for this, by its own terms. Its multi-currency account terms, last updated on 9 July 2026, say the account is for "an individual applying for personal use" and that "you may not use the Global Account to hold or transact funds on behalf of third parties". There's no LemFi business product.

Wise is less clear-cut and worth checking yourself before you plan around it. Nigeria doesn't appear on the list of countries where Wise says you can hold a balance, and it isn't in Wise's country-by-country regulatory pages either. If a Wise Business account is central to your plan, ask Wise directly rather than assuming.

Payoneer sits somewhere in between. A Nigerian business with CAC registration can hold Payoneer balances and withdraw to a Nigerian bank, and Payoneer's published withdrawal pricing is $1.50 to a same-currency account and up to 3% where the withdrawal converts currency. What Payoneer publishes is a receiving account, so it answers the question of how your company gets paid rather than how it pays a supplier abroad.