Five lines per deposit
Each step of the route produces a reference somewhere — a transfer receipt, a trade confirmation, a transaction hash, a cashier entry. Collected at the time, they take a minute. Reconstructed three months later from four different apps, they take an afternoon, and one of them is usually missing.
- The transfer outDate, amount, and the reference the bank or wallet issued. The account name matters as much as the number.
- The P2P tradeAmount, the rate accepted, and the reference. The rate is the line most worth keeping: it is the only way to know afterwards what the spread actually cost.
- The chain transferThe transaction identifier and the network. This is the record that proves where coin went if it went somewhere unexpected.
- The creditingWhat the cashier showed as received, which is not always what was sent minus the fee.
- The way backThe same four again in reverse, into the same account, in the same name.
What the record is for
Principally one thing: answering a routine question quickly. Verification is where a withdrawal stops if anything does not line up, and "where did this come from" is among the ordinary questions. Someone with five dated lines answers it in a sentence.
The second use is arithmetic. This site publishes assumptions — 1.5% to 4% on the spread, a flat fee between ₦480 and ₦4,000 — and a record of your own transfers replaces those assumptions with figures. After three deposits you know your own route cost, which is better than anything published here.
A worked example of the record
What five lines actually look like, for a ₦50,000 deposit. Nothing here is confidential, nothing requires an app, and the whole thing takes less time than reading this paragraph.
| Step | What to write | Why it is the one that matters |
|---|---|---|
| Transfer out | date · ₦50,000 · wallet reference · account name | proves where the naira started |
| P2P trade | date · ₦50,000 · rate accepted · trade reference | the rate is the only way to know the spread you paid |
| Chain transfer | date · amount in coin · network · transaction id | proves where the coin went |
| Credited | date · amount the cashier showed | catches a difference early |
| Way back | the same four, in reverse, same account | answers the source-of-funds question |
The highlighted rows are the two that do work nothing else can do.
After three deposits those rows contain your own spread, your own chain fee and your own total route cost — measurements rather than the assumptions this site publishes. That is a better number than anything on the method page, and it belongs to you.
The record you will wish you had
Three situations turn a missing record into a real problem, and none of them is unusual. A withdrawal held pending a source-of-funds answer. A transfer that did not arrive, where the transaction identifier is the only thing anyone can act on. And a bank asking, reasonably, about a pattern of payments to an exchange.
In all three the useful answer is dated, specific and already written down. Reconstructing it afterwards means opening four apps, two of which have shortened their history, and the one line that is always missing is the rate accepted at the P2P trade — because no receipt for it exists anywhere except in the exchange's own record of a trade you may no longer be able to see.
Where to keep it
- Somewhere that is not one of the apps. An account that is inaccessible for any reason takes its history with it.
- In a form you can read in a year. A screenshot of a screen is worse than five typed lines.
- Including the failures. A transfer that did not arrive is the record most worth having.
Nearby on this route
Three pages that pick up where this one stops: A first deposit, step by step, Reading a P2P order book, Guides.