NAIRA VS US DOLLAR: 3 things to know before changing dollars to naira in Nigeria.

Earlier this year there were claims from certain quarters that a dollar would equal 900 Nigerian Naira by the end of 2021. It sounded absurd at the time but it’s looking very much possible at the time of writing where 1 dollar (USD) equals 570 Naira.

Naira vs US dollar has always been a major issue in the minds of most Nigerians. Some people assume the inflation of prices of goods and services in Nigeria is directly linked to the fall of the naira in comparison to the dollar.

There’s a lot of advice from certain quarters and financial influencers for more Nigerians to save their money in dollars in a bid to avoid the reduction in value.

This seems like really sound advice at the moment and as we considered it we came up with the naira vs US dollar: three things to know before changing US dollars to naira in Nigeria.

The only legal tender in Nigeria is still the Nigerian naira and soon (from October 1st) the e-naira.

All you need to know about e-naira

This basically means, no matter how much you save in dollars, you’d have to convert it to naira to purchase goods and services within Nigeria. So here we have naira vs dollar: three things to know before changing dollars to naira in Nigeria.

This is important to avoid getting cheated by local BDC (Bureau De Change) vendors.

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Ask for new series dollar notes.

Every US Dollar notes has a series number. 1999 is an old series. The new series is from 2009 to 2017. The importance of this is that the old series is not worth as much like the new series and most commercial banks would reject old series notes as deposits. The difference in the rate of exchange for the old and new series could be as much as 50 Naira. So it’s wise to ensure all your dollar notes are new series and that is from 2009-2017.

Use the black market.

The value in the black market is usually higher than that of commercial banks. This is advised but is definitely not financial advice from us. For example, if the bank rate is 1 dollar to 500 Naira, you’d most likely find 1 dollar to 550 N in the black market. So yes, even though it’s much safer to run transactions with licensed financial institutions, the black market will get you more naira per dollar.

Use larger bills.

Even though they all amount to the same figure at the end of the day, larger bills are worth more in the market. The amount you’ll get for a hundred dollar single bill will be much more than you get for five, twenty dollar bills even though they’re both 100 dollars. So it’s always better to have higher bills or denominations.