Kuda Bank Review - Is it worth it
What is Kudabank?
Kuda Bank is a full-fledged digital-only bank which is operating with a banking license. Kuda is designed for your smartphone, free of the ridiculous charges that regular bank charges, and it is also great at helping you to budget, spend smartly, and to save more.
Awesome Features of Kuda Bank:
No ATM Card Maintenance fees.
No Charges for cash withdrawals.
"No transfer fees to Other Nigerian banks" (*Kuda gives out two free transfer to other banks every month. After that any transfer carried out to other banks cost N10.)
Free Deposits (**Kuda account holders can deposit money in over 10,000 branches across Nigeria for a zero charge.)
Wait first: Is this even possible? Yes, it is.
TLDR Version
Regular banks normally charge fees for things like transferring money from your account to another account number in another bank. Kuda says it would not charge you as much, or at all(twice in a month). Monies that are kept with banks (deposits) do not exactly sit there, but they are matched to be given out as loans to those who are in need of them now and would pay back later with interest. Alternatively, they are invested into businesses that provide yields from which the actual owner of the deposit would get paid a portion as interest, or gets paid nothing out of it, this depends on the class of account, whether it is current or savings.
Kuda would technically invest the ‘retained balances’ of monies that are kept with them, and the proceeds of the investments are used to subsidize fees such as transfer charges, card maintenance, etc, everybody is happy.
Then, you might be wondering how profitable it is for them, the truth is that they are practically doing practically what the regular banks are doing, but with less overhead costs, because they do not build branches that need maintenance and which they individual staffs with employees of different pay grades, they do not use fleets of cars to move their account officers around, etc. They invest ‘more’ in the technology that drives the fintech industry.
Mobile-first
For Kudabank, they are mobile-first. This makes a lot of sense as the Nigeria Technology market is a largely mobile dominated market. Being mobile-only is a great way to start, especially as quite a number of people do not enjoy the physical, "brick, and mortar" banking experience(stress from standing in queues, etc.).
Next-to-zero (Bank) charges
Now to a very important feature. Regular banking institutions have lived largely on bank charges. Inter/intrabank transfer charges, card maintenance charges, SMS alert charges, and more are frequent financial burdens that their users have to keep managing up. Kuda has reduced this to the barest minimum.
Kuda does not charge you any card maintenance fee, neither do they do SMS alert charges. For transfers, currently, each Kudabank customer gets 25 free transfers every month.
Kudabank has predicted that this move would save its users a significant amount of 1,312.5 Naira every month and 15,250 Naira every year. (This is the equivalent of what traditional banks would have charged them if they did that number of transfers per month).
Flexibility
Talking about efficiency, the flexibility of the features packed in Kudabank has surprised its users. Not only that, but users have also been excited by the ease and flexibility of the company’s operation.
A significant aspect of this is that you would get your Kuda card delivered to your doorstep. To be clear, no other bank does this.
Any limits on the Premium Accounts? Yes. there's a 250,000 naira limit on a Single Transfer, 1 million Naira Max in a day, 500,000 Naira on POS, 30,000 naira single withdrawal on ATM. Limits do not matter because there are NO CHARGES!!
Customer service
While they do not run a 24/7 customer service as noted by some users, follow up responses to their messages and inquiries were swift and near-instant.
Users love a product with which they would not experience unnecessary issues. And if they do, they want to be able to resolve those issues in a jiffy. Traditional banks do not provide these, Kudabank does.
In fact, Hubspot reports that over 90% of customers rate an immediate response as “important” when they have a customer service issue. “Immediate” here is defined as less than 10 minutes.
Additional account benefits
Asides from just being a bank to you, with Kudabank you also have a savings feature. Where you can set it to save a particular amount whenever you spend money from your savings account.
A savings feature has always been needed and used even before the advent of Fintech products that are solely focused on savings, the bank account also served as the savings product. But no deliberate action was done to make the experience of the “savings account” better for their users.
In the end, Nigerians (and also Africans) would choose products that serve them better and hit them at the exact point of their needs.
Related Courses and Certificate
FinTech Course and Certification
SAP Simple Finance Course And Certification
E-Accounting Course and Certification
