Why people are leaving Kuda bank for Opay

Following an announcement from Kuda bank, Nigerians have said they will be leaving the bank for Opay.

Kuda bank, mobile banking platform which prides itself as Nigeria’s first mobile-only bank licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria with “Zero card maintenance fees, free transfers and automatic savings” has hit a brick wall with a directive from the federal government of Nigeria.

In a statement sent to its users earlier this week, Kuda said, “in line with the FG stamp duty act, we are required by law to apply a N50 charge to all deposits of N10,000 or more made into your Kuda account.” This charge will apply to deposits made via electronic transfers, a debit card or cash deposits from tomorrow, July 15th 2022. In response, some of its users have lamented the new directive saying the bank is no longer the bank of the free while some others have decried the act enforced by the government, calling it harassment.

Kuda is the bank of the Free but the R is silent now.
— Attah Akor (@attah_akor) July 12, 2022

Others have alleged that Kuda, whose adverts on Twitter are one of the most heavily sponsored, must need money to pay for its sponsored ads.

Kuda don dey collect charges. Somebody gotta pay for all those ads.
— Attah Akor (@attah_akor) July 12, 2022

The bank however explained that they do not gain anything from this charge as they hand over all the monies made from the charge to the deferral government.

https://twitter.com/SirDavidBent/status/1546816377067114496?s=20&t=gzWwUPalOZNCSSu3fQ5VQQ

While many maintain they will abandon Kuda for Opay, Opay’s terms of use raise a few eyebrows. The company does not provide warranty or protection of any sort and says, “OPay may in its sole discretion and at any time terminate your access to the Service or discontinue providing the Service or any part of the Service, with or without notice. You agree that OPay will not be responsible or liable to you or any third party for modifying or discontinuing the Service, or for terminating or suspending your access to the Service.”

Kuda on the other hand says, they “may, at any time, modify the terms and conditions of our relationship but we will not do this without first informing you of such modification,” among others.

Also, in 2019, Opay increased transaction fees for bank transfers from N10 in all to N45 for the first transaction in a day and a 1% processing fee for every other transaction. The reason for the increment according to Opay country manager, Iniabasi Akpan was to encourage more transfers within the Opay app.

The increment made a lot of its users consider jumping ship because what made them begin using Opay were the discounts and N10 transaction fee the app entered with. Now, for every other transfer made on Opay, a 1% processing fee is applied, whereas Kuda still has its 25 free monthly (outbound) transfers in place.