A flat 50 naira levy on each electronic transfer of 10,000 naira or more.
Levy per transfer
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Monthly levy
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Annual levy
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A small charge that adds up
The Electronic Money Transfer Levy is the line on your bank alert that reads NGN 50. It is a flat charge, not a percentage, applied once to an electronic receipt or transfer of NGN 10,000 or more. Send NGN 10,000 and you pay NGN 50. Send NGN 5 million and you still pay NGN 50. The amount per transfer never changes above the threshold, which is exactly why people underestimate it: the sting is not any single deduction, it is the count. Move money forty times a month and the levy stops being a rounding error.
This calculator does two things. It tells you whether a given transfer crosses the NGN 10,000 line at all, and it scales the levy across however many qualifying transfers you make in a typical month, then annualises it. It is aimed at anyone who pays a lot of suppliers, runs a small trading business, or simply wants to know what the levy is costing a household over a year.
Who pays, and who is exempt
The structure here is stable and worth learning even as the wider 2025 reform shifts other taxes. The levy attaches to qualifying electronic transfers, and your bank deducts and remits it to the government, so you never file anything yourself. Three points decide whether you pay. First, the transfer must be NGN 10,000 or above, the threshold this calculator applies. Below that, nothing is charged. Second, it is a single levy per qualifying transaction, not one charge on the sender and another on the receiver. Third, transfers between accounts owned by the same person are exempt, so sweeping your own money from a savings account to a current account at the same bank should not attract it.
The figures the calculator uses, the flat NGN 50 and the NGN 10,000 floor, are the ones in force as modelled here, but confirm the current amount and threshold with the Federal Inland Revenue Service, because the reform has touched several transaction-level charges and the position can move.
A trader making 30 transfers a month
Picture a small wholesaler who pays suppliers, settles logistics, and tops up float by bank transfer. A typical transfer is NGN 25,000, which is comfortably above the threshold, so each one attracts the NGN 50 levy. They make about 30 such transfers a month. That is NGN 1,500 a month and NGN 18,000 over a year, using the rate this calculator applies. Eighteen thousand naira is a real number for a thin-margin trader, and it is invisible until you total it.
A common mistake, and one way to trim it
People assume splitting a payment dodges the levy. It usually does the opposite. Because the charge is per qualifying transfer rather than a percentage of value, breaking one NGN 40,000 payment into four NGN 10,000 transfers turns a single NGN 50 levy into NGN 200. Where the choice exists, consolidating several small payments to the same payee into one transfer reduces the count, and the count is the only thing that drives the total. The flip side is that paying below NGN 10,000 avoids the levy entirely, which can matter for tiny, frequent settlements, though the convenience usually outweighs NGN 50.
Does the levy apply to card payments and POS?
The levy is aimed at electronic transfers between accounts. Ordinary card purchases at a POS terminal are a different transaction type and are not the target of this NGN 50 charge, though banks and merchants may apply their own card or service fees that have nothing to do with the levy. If your statement shows charges you do not recognise, ask your bank to itemise them.
Can a business claim the levy back as an expense?
Bank charges and statutory transaction levies incurred wholly for the business are generally deductible costs when you work out taxable profit, in the same way other operating bank fees are. Keep the bank statements that show the levies so the figure is evidenced, and confirm the treatment for your year with the Federal Inland Revenue Service, since the reform restated parts of the deduction rules.