How to Pay Bills for Family Back Home in Nigeria From Canada

If you send money home, you know the routine. Check the rate. Send. Wait. Message to say it has landed. Message again a week later to ask if the light bill was actually paid.

That is four steps and two follow ups for something that happens every month.

The version most people are living

Picture someone in Brampton sending money home to Lagos on the last Friday of every month. The routine: check the rate, send, message to say it has landed, then message again mid-month to ask whether the DSTV was renewed.

In December the transfer goes out a day late because of the holidays. The decoder goes off on the 27th, during the one week of the year the whole family is in the house. Everyone is fine about it, which somehow makes it worse.

The money was never the problem. The timing was, and the timing was being managed by memory across a six-hour time difference.

What people normally do

Send money and let them handle it. Simple, and often right. The downside is that money that arrives as cash gets spent as cash, and the specific bill you had in mind is not always the thing it went to.

Do it yourself on a Nigerian app. Works if you still hold a Nigerian account and card. Many people abroad do not, or the card stopped working after they left.

Ask a sibling to pay and refund them. Works until you are the family bank and nobody keeps track.

What to think about before you pick

Timing. Bills have dates. A transfer that takes two days is fine for rent and not fine for a prepaid meter that ran out this morning.

Rate. Every method has a rate and most have a fee somewhere. Compare the amount that lands, not the rate that was advertised.

Proof. With a direct bill payment you get a receipt or a token. With cash you get a phone call and a promise.

Repetition. This is the one people underestimate. It is not one payment. It is the same payment every month for years.

Where Subsecute fits

Subsecute is built for the recurring version of this. You set up the bill once, it is paid on schedule, and you get told before each payment goes out.

You are not checking a rate every month. You are not sending instructions. You are not asking anyone whether it went through.

Set. Automate. Relax.