Opay in recent years has become a household name in the banking industry, it has managed to achieve this feat thanks to the ease of operations and plethora of products available on its mobile application.
One of such product is the fixed savings product. Since being launched on the opay application, the savings product has garnered over a million users.
Today we’re going to look at fixed savings and ultimately how to lock money on Opay and earn intrest.
What is opay Locked Fixed deposit savings all about?
Opay fixed savings is a plan that gives you interest on fixed deposit saving, savings interest is only paid out on due date along with the principal.
But that’s not all, let’s go a little bit deeper.
Opay fixed savings modes
Opay fixed deposit has two modes, locked and unlocked, If you choose to lock your savings while creating the savings plan.
Two things will happen:
- All the Intrest will be paid to you immediately.
- The money will be locked up and you won’t be able to withdraw it in advance, no matter the circumstances, you will have to wait till the due date.
If you don’t lock it, intrest will be paid at due date along with the principal, but you have the freedom of liquidating it at anytime.
How to lock money on Opay savings
To lock money on Opay, follow the steps below:
- Open your Opay application on either iphone or android.
- On the footer navigation click on “Finance”.
- The savings page will open, click on “Fixed”.
- Click on “Create a plan”.
- Select the duration period, eg 30-60 days, 60-300 days, 300 days to 1000 days, remember that the higher the duration, the more potential intrest you can earn.
- Fill in the plan name, the amount and the payback date.
- Select whether it will be locked or unlocked, this step is very important, remember if you lock the plan, you won’t be able to withdraw the money until due date.
- Click on “Next”.
- You’ll be shown a payment page, which you can use either your opay account, Owealth, ATM card or bank deposit to make the payment.
- If successful, your plan will be created.
Now that we’ve known the terms of locking money on Opay, let’s see the intrest rates on locked fixed Savings.
| Duration (Days) | Balance ≤ N300k | Balance > N300k |
| 7-60 | 15% | 6% |
| 61 – 180 | 16% | 7% |
| 181 -364 | 17% | 8% |
| 365 – 1000 | 18% | 9% |
The table above shows the intrest you’ll earn if you fix an amount of money on Opay for a certain period of time, and as you can see, the longer the savings duration, the higher the intrest you can potentially earn.
So for savings of N300,000 and below you’ll be paid 15-18% annual interest and for savings of N300,000 and above, you’ll be paid interest of 15-18% for the first 300k and 6-9% interest for the remainder of the money.
EXAMPLE:
Let’s say you decide to fix N500,000 for 90 days, since it falls between 61 – 180 days range, you’ll effectively earn Intrest of 16% on the first N300,000, while for the remaining N200,000 you’ll earn intrest of 7%.
So let’s calculate: (16% * 300,000) / (365 days) * (90 days) = N11,835
Then, (7% * 200,000) / 365 * (90) = N3,452
TOTAL = 15,287 * 10% withholding tax = N1,528
TOTAL INTREST EARNED IN 90 DAYS = N13,759
More facts to know about locking money on opay
- If you withdraw your savings in advance, you’ll loose 100% of the intrest you’ve earned. (This information is gotten directly from the official opay application).
- On liquidating, the money will be paid to your owealth account within 48 hours.
- In compliance with Nigerian tax regulations, you’ll be charged 10% on the intrest you earn for each Savings plan.
ADVISE! If you're ready to save with a fixed plan, my advise having saved with opay for over a year now would be that you should not use the locked savings plan, as it's literally impossible to withdraw your savings in advance, only use it if you're totally and 100% sure that you won't need the money for anything, not even on emergencies during the savings period.
Click to read our guide that covers all opay savings products and how to use them.
