Nigerian Black Market rates have made it difficult for Nigerians in diaspora to send money to their families and friends over the years. Aside from this issue, they are having difficulty finding a reputable Money Transfer Agent that can also supply the rates set by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
There are a few solutions, but they will need you to be more tech-savvy than the average Nigerian. For example, individuals now use money transfer applications to send money down to Nigeria.
Making it easy for people to be able to find money transfer apps that offers good transfer rates from one country to another.
I was principally the UI Designer on this project, which had a tight timeline and a PRD that was handed over the first week, but I chose to squeeze in a few more hours for research so that I could get some additional insights before moving on to prototyping.
I have a large number of friends who have migrated to countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, and the United States, so I was able to have a phone interview with them to discuss the difficulties further.
It turns out that they all had to hunt for money transfer agents at some time to assist them send money home, making it difficult and inconvenient for them due to the exorbitant exchange rates offered by these agents. To give you an idea, the black market naira equivalent to $1 in Nigeria is around 600 Naira, but the CBN delivers you this for 410 Naira. Consider having to deal with these agents at exorbitant charges, when cbn rates are rarely used.
Nigerian CBN restrictions were also beginning to make it more difficult to transmit money internationally, whether through bank international transfers or not.
We had several limits when doing this, but we were able to work around them.