Is Piggyvest a scam or legit?
Without mincing a word, Piggyvest is the most popular savings app in Nigeria at the time of writing this, I believe you have come across it in one way or another. Personally, I’ve been using the platform for more than 5 years and the question is still there.
Is it the best savings app for you?
Let’s talk about 5 factors you might need to re/consider before starting your savings journey with Piggyvest.
Before we delve into these factors, chances are that you’re hearing about Piggyvest for the first time, so let me reintroduce it to you.
About Piggyvest
Just like the traditional piggy banks, Piggyvest is a platform that lets you save your money for a period of time and earn interest on it.
You can also put the money into some investments to earn high interest right on the app instead of locking it in a safe.
Although the biggest platform in Nigeria in the personal finance niche, here are 5 things you should consider before signing up with Piggyvest.
Factors to Consider Before Joining Piggyvest as a User.
- Buggy App
Before, Piggyvest used to be very fast and seamless. But now, it is very slow and even hangs most of the time.
If you check the Play Store reviews by users most people are complaining about the same thing, bugs.
I was very excited to see the fine design when I updated the app on my phone, little did I know that being beautiful comes with a price. My phone keeps warning me about the app whenever I open it for just a few minutes.
As a software developer myself, I know there can’t be perfect software without bugs but it becomes a problem when the bugs aren’t fixed as soon as possible, especially if it involves financial transactions.
If you don’t care about slow or hanging mobile apps, then Piggyvest may be for you.
- Withdrawal and Breaking Penalty
Believe me, this would have been the best reason why Piggyvest is the ideal savings app for you. But there’s a problem.
Piggyvest lets you withdraw your money without any penalty once after every 3 months. If you missed withdrawing your money on the “free withdrawal day“, you have to wait until after 3 months, which to me is not that okay. At least Piggyvest gives a 3-day grace for free withdrawal.
That doesn’t mean you can’t withdraw your money anytime, you can and it’s a great opportunity for Piggyvest to make money if you choose to withdraw when it’s not your free withdrawal day.
Let’s say you need the money urgently because unforeseen circumstances happen at a time, Piggyvest can release the money for you but you’ll be charged 2.5% of the money as a breaking fee.
I am not saying there shouldn’t be a penalty for breaking your savings when it’s not the withdrawal day, but common, 2.5% is too much just to “promote savings culture” according to Piggyvest.
If you don’t know how high 2.5 percent is, here is an example.
Let’s say you have saved about N5m and you suddenly need the money to sort out some bills, Piggyvest will remove N125,000 and give you N4,875,000.
If you do your calculation at the end of the day, you might realize that the breaking fee is higher than all the interest you’ve earned on the platform.
For instance, I earned about N1,800 on my N200k savings for 2 months, that’s N3,600+. But the breaking fee is N5,000
This same mathematics works for N1m, N20m, or higher.
If you think the one-day per every 3 months and 2.5% breaking fee is not an issue, Piggyvest is okay for you.
- Customer Support
Before patronizing any institution, first of all, check the efforts put into its customer care and support because if the institution doesn’t care about you as a customer, then you will have an extremely bad experience using its product or service.
Let’s give it up for Piggyvest, the company has exceptional customer support put into place. The customer support reps are always available to help. I messaged them in the night around 8 pm and I got responses from them, even on non-working days.
This for me, is a green flag and I hope it continues that way.
That being said, the best way to contact Piggyvest is through their verified Twitter/X handle. Email can be slow especially if your matter is urgent. They have a phone number you can call too.
If good customer support is what you are looking for before picking a savings app, Piggyvest is very good there.
- Flexible Account Management
Every app that I have been using, gives you control over your account whilst ensuring the account is safe.
For example, I can log in to my GT bank online and change my email, phone number, etc., and verify with a hardware token that I’m the one making those changes.
For some fintech apps, you can do some bare minimum things like that but Piggyvest says no.
If you want to do anything like changing phone numbers or withdrawing bank details, you have to contact Piggyvest.
I mean, that’s to foster security right? But it’s very unnecessary. They can request OTP, email approval, ID verification, or any other automated means to ensure you do what you want to as soon as possible.
I also realized you cannot deactivate or close your account too, unless you contact them. These are very basic features on some fintech apps.
These screenshots are from my Kuda account.
But this shouldn’t be a problem since Piggyvest has a very fast response rate. The next problem you will be facing is trying to verify that the account belongs to you
But what if it’s in case of an emergency? You have to wait until they reply to you.
And be ready to go an extra length to prove it’s your account. Your BVN or ID verification won’t be enough, if you have deposited from any bank account that’s not registered in your Piggyvest account, be ready to provide the bank statement of that deposit otherwise, they won’t rectify anything for you.
To me, it’s no longer a security measure but a hindrance. Even after verifying my details, they still asked me to send them the bank statement of the deposit I made via POS. To date, they haven’t rectified it.
You may need to thoroughly consider this before opting for Piggyvest as your savings platform.
- Security: Is Piggyvest a scam or legit?
In short, Piggyvest is legit.
Piggyvest has been in business actively since 2019 although they started Piggybank.ng in 2016 as a save-only platform. That’s a combined 7 Years and the company is still operational to date.
They have secured all forms of security certification as a Fund manager in Nigeria.
While doing my research about scam scandals on Piggyvest, I saw 2 reports.
This report by RipplesNigeria says hackers stole over N2.3m from Piggyvest but there’s no further report if this has been fixed or not.
But what I know is that the security is now tighter and that it becomes annoying to me… every second, you have to use the entire pin to verify you’re the one using the app.
There is another rumor that a fake money lender company, Bamise ImagineLenders scammed Piggyvest N2billion but according to Nairametrics, Piggyvest debunked the rumor and assured the public that their funds are safe.
Aside from these two, there’s no scam or fraud report on Piggyvest. In 7 years of doing business, this is a great achievement.
If security is your concern, you have no worries with Piggyvest.
Your decision: Is Piggyvest the right savings app for you?
Although Piggyvest might have some disadvantages such as the withdrawal policy, breaking penalties, and bugs in the apps, the overall experience is good.
Human beings grow, and so do the way we approach problems. I hope Piggyvest will work on these few issues soon so that they can have the throne for a very long time.
