Discover Products, Get Discovered.
Individuals find the right products. Businesses reach the right audience. One platform, free for both.
Individuals find the right products. Businesses reach the right audience. One platform, free for both.
See which Nigerian banks and apps can open a Naira account with zero minimum deposit, and the one bank that always charged, from Liners’ 2026 field study.
At 87 of the 100 banks Liners walked into, nobody asked for a single Naira before opening the account.
At one bank, it was ₦1,000 to ₦3,000 every time with no exceptions.
That’s a reality from our Naira account opening study. We discovered zero deposit is the norm in Nigeria, whether you open online or in person. Here’s more details on the study,
All five digital banks tested by Liners researchers were open with zero deposit, and so did 87 of 100 traditional bank visits. Access Bank was the one exception, charging ₦1,000 to ₦3,000 every single time our researchers visited.
Liners confirmed a ₦0 opening deposit across all 31 online account opens logged in the study, on every one of the five apps tested.
Across all 31 opens, 19 walked away with a free virtual card the same session. This was a real card you could spend from immediately, not just an account number on a screen.
The bigger surprise is how similar the walk-in experience was.
87 of the 100 branch visits Liners logged required no minimum opening deposit at all. Most Nigerian banks, digital or traditional, will let you create a Naira account with nothing in it.
Where a deposit did come up, it was mostly a one-off rather than a bank-wide policy.
These single instances happened at Stanbic IBTC (Ipaja), Wema Bank (FUTA), Ecobank (Okota), First Bank (Bodija) and Keystone Bank (Ota), plus two visits at Polaris Bank (Bodija).
All five Access Bank visits in the Liners study required a deposit, somewhere between ₦1,000 and ₦3,000, with no free option logged at any branch.
The highest single deposit in the whole study came from FCMB’s Mosan Ipaja branch, which asked one researcher for ₦10,000, far above what any other bank charged.
A free account opening isn’t the same as a free account.
Debit cards, maintenance charges and SMS alert fees all sit outside the opening deposit, and most banks in the study didn’t volunteer what those cost either.
If a ₦0 opening deposit is what pulled you in, it’s worth asking about those other fees before you sign anything.
If a guaranteed free open matters most to you, a digital bank is better. If you’re walking into a branch, budget for the possibility of a small deposit, and know that Access Bank will ask for one every time.
All five digital banks in Liners’ study, OPay, PalmPay, Moniepoint, Kuda and ALAT by Wema, opened with ₦0 across every logged attempt. On the traditional side, 87 of 100 branch visits also required no deposit.
No. Every one of the 31 online account opens Liners tracked in its 2026 field study started with ₦0, across all five apps tested.
Access Bank was the only bank where every single visit in the study required a deposit, between ₦1,000 and ₦3,000. FCMB’s Mosan Ipaja branch had the highest single deposit logged, at ₦10,000.
It’s the only one that asked every time. A handful of other branches, including Stanbic IBTC, Wema, Ecobank, First Bank, Keystone and Polaris, asked for a deposit on isolated visits rather than consistently.
No. Debit card, maintenance and SMS alert fees are separate from the opening deposit, and most banks in the study didn’t mention them unless asked directly.
Chief Content Editor
Adepeju Toromade is Chief Content Editor at Liners and holds final sign-off on every guide, comparison, and explainer published on the platform. She enforces a source-first editorial standard, where product claims, pricing, regulatory positioning, and market data are traced to primary documentation before they go live. Her bylined work applies the same bar she sets across Liners' coverage of African software.
Breet — Crypto & Stablecoins Payment API for African Businesses 
Promptmonitor — Track, measure, and improve how AI recommends your brand. 
Promptmonitor