How to Bypass CBN Dollar Limit in Nigeria
For some years now, the Central Bank of Nigeria has been limiting how much Nigerians can spend online through the commercial banks in the country.
At first, Nigerians could spend $100 monthly online for foreign transactions before it was reduced to a paltry sum of $20.
This means that if you pay for goods or services on foreign websites, you cannot spend more than $20 monthly.
This also affects Nigerian students studying online on websites like Coursera, Edx and Udemy.
In this article, I will show you how to bypass CBN Dollar limit in Nigeria.
Table of Contents
Why CBN Placed a Limit on Dollar Cards
There are various speculations to consider.
Arbitrage Business
A lot of Nigerians became involved in the Arbitrage business.
How does the Arbitrage business work?
Imagine this scenario;
CBN sells dollars for ₦450 per dollar meanwhile, in the black market, the price is ₦590 per dollar.
There are two friends, Kunle and Uche.
Kunle lives in the United States while Uche lives in Nigeria.
Before Kunle travelled out of the country, he opened 20 different bank accounts and collected the ATM cards for each account.
Every month, Uche (the friend in Nigeria) funds Kunle’s Bank accounts with 1 million Naira while Kunle withdraws the dollar equivalent in the United States at the CBN rate.
If CBN sells a dollar for ₦450, that means 1 million Naira will be equivalent to $2,222.
Kunle will withdraw ₦2,222 dollars from an ATM in the United States and send the money back to Uche in Nigeria.
Uche will withdraw the dollar from his domiciliary account and go to exchange the dollar on the black market.
Remember that the black market rate is ₦590 per dollar.
After Uche changes the dollar on the black market, the $2,222 becomes ₦1,310,980.
From this transaction alone, the two friends made over ₦310,000 in profit.
They can keep doing this as many times as possible.
Another common method of arbitrage was using the Naira card to fund payment processors like Neteller at the CBN Dollar rate, use the money to buy crypto, and then sell the crypto at the P2P rate (black market) back to Naira.
People that knew about it made money by exploiting the system.
Forex Scarcity
Nigeria is an import-dependent country. We were spending more dollars than we were earning hence, the country’s foreign reserves were dwindling.
In a bid to reduce the effects of the forex scarcity in the country, Nigeria’s apex bank, the Central bank of Nigeria limited the amount Nigerians could spend on goods and services.
One of such effects is the increase in exchange rates.
4 Ways to Bypass CBN Dollar Limit
1. Open a Domiciliary Account
Since most of our transactions are in USD, a United States Dollar domiciliary account comes in handy when you want to make payments online.
Visit your bank and request for a USD domiciliary account opening form, fill the form and submit your means of identification.
When the account is opened, request for a debit card. For most banks, there is no limit to how much you can spend with your dollar debit card when making payments online.
The best domiciliary account I recommend is the Access bank domiciliary account. Why I like the Access bank dom account is, you can easily send money to other Access bank dom account users for free. This means you can easily buy dollars from other Access bank account holders in exchange of Naira.
When I want to sell dollars, I transfer to my exchanger’s Access bank dom account for free and he sends Naira to my account.
Guaranty Trust Bank account is also a good option but transfers to other GTBank holders and other banks is a bit restricted. However, the GTBank domiciliary account debit card is more secured because it is not linked to your main account.
I will write a different article explaining the difference between the Access Bank and GTBank domiciliary account.
2. Create a PYYPL Account
PYYPL is a non-bank digital app that is best knows for their virtual cards. If you are looking for a virtual card that you can fund with USDT (cyrpto), PYYPL is your best bet.
You can buy USDT on Binance and send the funds to your PYYPL card; then use the funds in the card to buy online. When you open a PYYPL account, they ask for information about your job, they use this information to decide the monthly limits they will place on your account.
My PYYPL account has a monthly limit of $4,000.
Also, you can use the PYYPL card to verify your PayPal account. To get started with PYYPL, download the app from the app store and register.
3. Open a PayPal Account
Most foreign businesses accept payments in PayPal. You can open a Dubai or Lesotho PayPal account, fund the account through exchangers and use it to pay for goods and services online.
There is no limit to how much you can fund your account.
You can also use the PayPal account to receive payments if you want to.
You can check my article on how to open a Foreign PayPal account in Nigeria.
4. Get a Payoneer Account
Payoneer is an international payments platform that allows freelancers receive money from freelancing websites like Fiverr and Upwork.
Business owners also use Payoneer to pay for goods and services worldwide.
When you open a Payoneer account, you will get a free United States dollar bank account, Euro bank account and a pound bank account.
Payoneer will send you a free physical dollar MasterCard once you use your account to receive at least $1,000. Recently, Payoneer introduced a virtual card feature for its users.
When you get paid for jobs done online, you can use the funds in your Payoneer account to pay for services online. You can also request funds from other Payoneer users.
You will get a $25 signup bonus when you sign up to Payoneer with this link.
What is the Best way to Bypass CBN Dollar Limit?
The best way to bypass the CBN dollar limit is by opening a domiciliary account. After opening your domiciliary account, you request for a debit card. This card will be used to make payments online without restrictions.
The second best option is getting a PYYPL virtual card. This option is best if you are familiar with crypto or using Binance.
Getting a domiciliary account is better than using the PYYPL method because PYYPL charges you extra to use their platform.
Thank you for reading.
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What method do you use to bypass the dollar limits? I would love to hear from you in the comment section.
