Opening a corporate account in Nigeria

15:22 - 03 May 2016

Corporate account

This is an exclusive blog post by Sadiq Okocha....According to World Bank’s DoingBusiness.org, the business registration process in Nigeria is one of the slowest and most difficult. Follow me as I walk you through it stepbystep.

If you want to open a Nigerian corporate account, you will need the following documents:

● Certificate of Incorporation

● Tax Identification Number (TIN)

● SCUML Certificate or Letter of Exemption

● Valid IDs of Directors (photocopies)

● Passport photo of each account signatory

● Board Resolution

We (Legal Forms) opened our corporate account with Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB). We chose GTB because it's generally seen as the most reliable, tech savvy bank. So far they've not disappointed.

You must fill out the corporate account form and must also present the documents listed above. Next, you will make a payment of 5000 naira.

This payment is to verify that your certificate of incorporation is valid. I thought 5000 naira was too high to perform a simple company verification.

Keep in mind that a name availability search at the CAC only costs 500 naira, so I'm not sure what they're doing with the remaining 4,500 naira. Only goodness knows.

What's so special about a Nigerian Corporate Account? Opening and operating a Nigerian corporate account allows your business to accept naira payments online.

This is great if you have a Nigerian ecommerce business. Some of you may be thinking, 'I don't need this. PayPal is now in Nigeria.' That's not entirely true. PayPal doesn't fully trust the Nigerian market yet, so they are being very cautious at the moment.

PayPal only permits Nigeria based users to make payments using the platform. PayPal does notyet allow Nigerian businesses to accept online payments. Got questions? Please ask in the comments section and I’ll do my best to reply in a timely manner.

Sadiq Okocha is a petroleum engineer, web developer, and a founder at