If you hate bank charges in Nigeria, you should know what I do about the Carbon wallet

If you, like me, hate Nigerian bank charges and you regularly pay/make more than two bills/transfers every month, you should definitely read this to the end. It will save you a few dimes every month and above that (if you're anything like me), give you the petty sense of gratification that you've been able to beat the establishment.

First things first, if you don't know about the Carbon wallet, here you go:

Carbon is the product formerly known as Paylater. It was rebranded recently (April 2019).
Aside: don't you just love the colour purple?

Now that you know what the Carbon wallet is, I'll just go right ahead to let you in on the important deets only. My Carbon wallet has become indispensable for my monthly bills - which are usually paid right after I receive that most exciting SMS message for employees the world over. For me, there's simply no better alternative today for my bill payments. Having said that, my only goal for writing this article is to show you how I arrived at that conclusion.

The table below compares the charges I pay when I use my Nigerian bank's mobile or internet banking app versus when I use the Carbon wallet for my monthly bill payments.

Bill name	Bill amount	Bank surcharge	Carbon wallet surcharge
Mum's DSTV bill	4,000 Naira	100 Naira	0 Naira (free)
Lekki Concession company (LCC) toll gate	10,000 Naira	100 Naira	50 Naira
Interbank transfer of monthly allowance to Ms Foo	16,000 Naira	52.5 Naira	10 Naira
Interbank transfer of monthly allowance to Mr Bar	10,000 Naira	52.5 Naira	10 Naira
Total		305 Naira	70 Naira

Apart from being more than 300% cheaper than using my bank's USSD, mobile or internet banking applications, my Carbon wallet also helps me save time on these bill payments. The first time that I made each of these payments via the Carbon app, I had the option to flag each one as a recurring bill. A recurring bill on the Carbon app is automatically replayed on a certain day every month (for me, this is two days after payday, to accommodate any delays 😉😉).

Hence, with my Carbon wallet, instead of doing 4 different transactions one after the other (which on top of costing me more money, used to take me at least 20 minutes to complete), all I need to do on payday now is fund my Carbon wallet with the total of my bills (+ 70 Naira for surcharges) from my salary account and then, I can just go right back to the worthwhile business of earning the next month's pay.

Do you know what else is so cheap, it's free? Moving money from my Nigerian bank account to my Carbon wallet! It's hard to believe, but yes, it's true. Whether I'm funding my wallet with my card or directly with my bank account, the amount that reflects in my Carbon wallet is the exact same amount that left my bank account.

Funding my Carbon wallet is free of charge

Stoked? You can find out more about the Carbon wallet on the Carbon FAQs page. Ready to dive in? All you need to get started is to download the app to your Android phone.