How to Send Money From Germany to Nigeria in 2026: Which Apps Actually Work, and What They Cost

Germany has one of the largest Nigerian populations in continental Europe, and almost every remittance comparison written for that audience makes the same silent assumption: that "Europe" is one market, and an app available to a sender in Paris is available to a sender in Berlin.

It isn't, and the gap is easy to demonstrate. Sendwave's own page for Nigeria lists the countries you can send from — USA, UK, Canada, France, Italy, Spain and Ireland. Germany is not on it. A comparison table that ranks Sendwave first for "Europe" is, for a German sender, ranking an app they cannot open.

So this guide starts with availability, not price. A cheap rate you can't access is not a rate.

The short answer

Check availability before you compare price. Eurozone coverage is per-country, not per-currency. Sendwave's own site excludes Germany while listing four other eurozone countries.
Wise and Remitly both confirm German senders on their own German sites, in euros, with Nigeria as a destination.
Wise publishes its number, which is unusual and useful. On its German site, a €1,000 transfer to Nigeria funded from a Wise account was quoted at a €7.18 fee — about 0.72% — at the rate shown that day.
Card-funded Western Union is the expensive end on this route: roughly 3% charged on top of what you send, plus about 2.4% built into the exchange rate. That is around 5.2% all in.
The spread is large enough to matter. On €1,000 the gap between the cheap options and card-funded Western Union is around ₦78,000. Send monthly and that is roughly ₦943,000 a year.
The euro is not the Canadian dollar. Nigeria's official rate is quoted for the euro directly, so a euro sender has a real reference rate — but the market that sets street pricing is still dollar-led.

First: can you actually use it from Germany?

This is what we could and could not confirm from each provider's own pages, checked in September 2026. We have deliberately not filled the gaps from comparison sites — that is how the wrong answer spreads.

| Provider | German senders? | How we checked | |---|---|---| | Wise | Yes | Wise's own German page for transfers to Nigeria quotes EUR→NGN with a fee and rate | | Remitly | Yes | Remitly's German site states you can send internationally from Germany, with EUR as the send currency and Nigeria among its destinations | | Western Union | Yes | Operates across the EU; check its own fee page for your exact quote | | Crypto (USDT) | Yes | Not tied to a corridor licence, but depends on the exchange you use at both ends | | Sendwave | No | Sendwave's own Nigeria page lists its sending countries: USA, UK, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Ireland | | LemFi | Could not confirm | LemFi's help centre would not load for us, and we could not find a sending-country list on its own site. Treat as unknown and check in the app |

That LemFi row is not a criticism of LemFi — it is an honest gap. LemFi is frequently the cheapest option on corridors where it operates, so if you are in Germany it is worth thirty seconds in the app to find out. We just aren't going to tell you it works when we could not confirm it.

What each one costs

Every provider on this route makes money in one of two places: a stated fee, or a margin inside the exchange rate. The second is invisible unless you look for it, which is why so much of the industry has moved there.

The only number that means anything is the total cost — the share of your money that never arrives, however it was taken.

To make the arithmetic legible we use an illustrative round rate of ₦1,600 per euro. It is a round number chosen for clarity, not a quote. At that rate €1,000 is ₦1,600,000 before anyone takes a cut, and every 1% of cost is ₦16,000.

| Provider | Stated fee | Built into the rate | Total cost | Naira delivered on €1,000 | |---|---|---|---|---| | Wise (own published figure) | €7.18 | None — mid-market | ~0.72% | ₦1,588,512 | | Remitly (Economy) | None | ~0.32% | ~0.32% | ₦1,594,880 | | Crypto (USDT) | ~1% + ₦3,000 flat | None directly | ~1.19% | ₦1,581,000 | | Western Union (card) | ~3%, on top | ~2.39% | ~5.23% | ₦1,516,272 |

(LemFi and Sendwave are left out of this table for the reason above: one is unconfirmed for Germany, the other excludes it.)

Checking the Western Union line, because its structure is the one that trips people up. The 3% fee is charged on top of the amount, so a €1,000 budget actually converts €1,000 ÷ 1.03 = €970.87 of principal, with €29.13 taken as fee. That principal converts at a rate about 2.39% below mid-market: 970.87 × 1,600 × 0.9761 = ₦1,516,272.

Checking the crypto line: €1,000 less a ~1% on-ramp cost is €990, which at ₦1,600 is ₦1,584,000, less a flat ₦3,000 for network and naira withdrawal fees = ₦1,581,000. It only looks competitive because the flat fee is small relative to €1,000; on €200 the same ₦3,000 hurts far more.

The gap between Remitly and card-funded Western Union is ₦78,608 on one €1,000 transfer. Send €1,000 every month and the annual difference is about ₦943,000.

Where Wise's own number beats our estimate

Something worth being open about. Our remittance comparison tool models Wise's euro pricing as a fixed fee plus a percentage, calibrated against Wise's own calculator. On €1,000 that model produces a fee of €7.70. Wise's German page, on the day we checked, quoted €7.18.

A 52-cent difference is small, but the direction is the point: our estimate is slightly conservative, and a live quote can beat it. This is why every table on this site says estimate and every provider row links out. Pricing on this route moves with payment method, amount, promotions and the day — no static table, ours included, is a substitute for the quote in front of you.

It also shows why Wise deserves credit on one axis regardless of ranking: it publishes the fee and the rate on a page you can read without signing up. Most of this industry does not.

Wise's fee shape, and when it wins

Wise's cost is mostly a fixed component plus a small percentage, so it gets proportionally cheaper as the amount rises:

| Amount | Modelled fee | As % of the transfer | |---|---|---| | €500 | €4.33 | 0.87% | | €1,000 | €7.70 | 0.77% | | €5,000 | €34.66 | 0.69% | | €10,000 | €68.36 | 0.68% |

For a large one-off — school fees, a medical bill, a property payment — the rate margin dominates and the fixed fee stops mattering. For a small monthly send, the fixed fee is a real part of the cost. Which is the practical argument for comparing at your amount rather than trusting any general ranking, this one included.

The euro is a better-behaved currency here than the Canadian dollar

When we looked at the CAD→NGN route, the structural problem was that no meaningful Canadian-dollar/naira market exists, so every quote is really two conversions stacked: CAD→USD→NGN.

The euro is in a better position. Nigeria's central bank quotes an official rate for the euro directly, alongside the dollar and the pound, so there is a genuine published EUR/NGN reference to measure a provider's margin against. You are not entirely reading a cross rate.

But do not over-read that. The parallel market — the one that mostly determines what naira your recipient's bank balance actually reflects — is dollar-led. When the euro weakens against the dollar, euro senders feel it even on a week when the naira has not moved against the dollar at all. So the honest position is in between: the euro leg is more visible than the Canadian dollar leg, and still not irrelevant. Our rates page tracks the naira side of it.

Funding: the avoidable cost

Germany runs on SEPA bank transfers, and for these providers a transfer funded from your bank account is normally the cheapest option available to you. The expensive option is a credit card.

Funding a money transfer by credit card is frequently treated by the card issuer as a cash advance rather than a purchase: interest from day one with no grace period, plus a cash-advance fee. That charge appears on your card statement, not inside the transfer app — so it never shows up in any comparison table, including ours. It is entirely avoidable by funding from a bank account when speed is not critical.

On regulation

Our US and UK guides point readers at FinCEN registration and FCA authorisation as the check to run before trusting a provider with a large transfer. The EU equivalent is that payment and e-money institutions are licensed in one member state and passported across the bloc, which means the entity holding your money may well be licensed somewhere other than Germany — and that is normal, not a warning sign.

The check to run is the same in shape: find the provider's own legal or regulatory page, see which entity and which regulator it names, and satisfy yourself before sending an amount you would be hurt to lose. We have deliberately not listed each provider's licensing entity here, because that is exactly the sort of detail that goes stale quietly and is better read from the source on the day.

What to actually do

Confirm the app works from Germany before comparing prices. Eurozone coverage is per-country. This is the step most guides skip.
Compare at your real amount, on the day. The ranking is amount-sensitive, and margins move.
Get verified early. First large transfers commonly trigger identity and source-of-funds checks that take days. Do that in a calm week, not the week fees are due.
Fund from your bank account, not a credit card, unless the speed is genuinely worth a cash advance.
Read first-transfer promo rates for what they are. Several providers offer a better rate once. That is real money, and it tells you nothing about the next twelve transfers.
Check the total, not the fee. If a provider will not show you the naira figure your recipient receives before you commit, that reluctance is itself information.

Compare what actually arrives, at your amount, in euros →

Availability was checked against each provider's own website in September 2026: Wise's and Remitly's German sites for German sending support, and Sendwave's own Nigeria page for its sending-country list. LemFi's coverage for German senders could not be confirmed from its own pages and is marked as unknown rather than guessed. The Wise fee of €7.18 on €1,000 is Wise's own published figure for a transfer funded from a Wise account; other cost figures are estimates from the fee structures our remittance tool calibrates against each provider's published pricing, and are standard repeat-customer rates excluding first-transfer promotions. The ₦1,600-per-euro rate in the worked examples is an illustrative round number for arithmetic, not a market rate. Fees, margins and corridor availability change — always confirm the live quote in the provider's own app before sending. This article is general information, not financial advice.