What changed on 1 January 2026
Effective 1 January 2026, the Nigeria Tax Act 2025 formally recategorises the long-standing Electronic Money Transfer Levy (EMTL) of ₦50 as a Stamp Duty, and confirms that it is deducted from the sender of the transfer — not the receiver, as it had been in some implementations prior to the change.
The flat ₦50 charge applies on any electronic transfer of ₦10,000 or more. Below ₦10,000 there is no charge. Salary payments and intra-bank self-transfers (i.e. moving money between two accounts that you yourself own at the same bank) are exempt.
Who collects what
The recategorisation does not change the user-visible amount (still ₦50), but it does:
- Anchor the levy in a different section of the tax code (Stamp Duty under the consolidated Tax Act, rather than as a stand-alone EMTL)
- Make the sender-pays rule explicit and uniform across banks (UBA, GTBank, Access, Zenith, FirstBank, etc.) and fintechs (OPay, PalmPay, Moniepoint, MTN MoMo PSB)
- Standardise the remittance schedule to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS)
Bank vs MoMo PSB collection differences
Before the recategorisation, banks and MoMo PSBs had slightly different practical implementations of the EMTL. Traditional commercial banks typically charged the levy at the moment of debiting the sender's account; MoMo PSB wallets sometimes charged it at the moment of crediting the receiver, particularly for inbound transfers from outside the wallet. The Tax Act 2025 unifies the implementation: the levy is collected by the originating institution (the bank or wallet from which the funds leave) at the moment the transfer is initiated, and the originating institution is responsible for monthly remittance to the FIRS.
For inbound flows from outside Nigeria — see the related article on MTN MoMo PSB + Thunes — the levy continues not to apply because the originating institution is foreign.
Exemptions in detail
The ₦50 levy has three explicit exemptions:
- Transfers below ₦10,000: the levy is a discrete charge that only applies at or above the ₦10,000 threshold, and it does not split across smaller transactions.
- Salary payments: salary disbursements from employer to employee accounts are exempt, recognised by the originating institution from the payment metadata or salary code.
- Intra-bank self-transfers: moving funds between two accounts held by the same individual at the same institution does not trigger the levy. Inter-bank self-transfers (i.e. moving between your own accounts at two different banks) do trigger the levy.
What is not affected
The recategorisation does not change:
- The ₦10,000 threshold
- The exemption for salary payments
- The exemption for intra-bank self-transfers
- The international inbound flow: the ₦50 still does not apply to inflows from abroad (see send-to-Nigeria)