Vella Finance Review: The Pros and Cons

Vella finance is a one-stop digital bank that offers a wide range of financial services including peer-to-peer payments, interest-bearing digital savings accounts, crypto wallet, airtime for cash exchange and multicurrency physical/virtual cards that can be used to pay for Facebook Ads, Wise, Instagram Ads, Google Ads, Alibaba, Wave, Shopify etc.

Digital banks incur fewer expenses compared to traditional brick and mortar banks. They don’t have physical branches with staff and other expenses, they can in turn pass on these reduced expenses to their customers in interest and better efficient services.

Vella is relatively new in the fintech market. It is a Nigerian company but fully incorporated in Delaware, United States of America. After gaining traction in Nigeria, plans are already in place for an operation in South Africa as the next stop and then countries like Ghana, Kenya, Botswana and Zimbabwe will also have access to their services in due time.

Vella Finance services

VellaTag and peer-to-peer payments: You can send and receive money from your friends and family quickly with your unique VellaTag. It works just like your regular bank wallet but exclusively within the Vella universe.

Vella Boost: this service allows you to earn up to 15% interest on your savings. Digital banks are able to offer high-interest rates on savings compared to traditional banks because they don’t incur the expenses of running a physical location, they can in turn pass on that reduced expenses to their customers.

Bills and utility payment: Pay your bills effortlessly, even from abroad in just a few simple steps on Vella. Easy to use, affordable and convenient.

Vella credits and loans: This service allows you to access emergency cash to expand your business up to the tune of 20 million Naira without collateral. You can also get a low interest business loan by using your existing savings and investments on Vella as collateral.

Vella for developers and entrepreneurs: business owners and developers can partner with Vella on API integration that will allow them accept cryptocurrencies and other fiat currencies seamlessly on their websites. Vella can be integrated seamlessly with Ecommerce websites such as Woocommerce, WordPress and Shopify within 10 minutes.

Multi-Currency cards: With the dollar scarcity in Nigeria, Vella allows business owners and entrepreneurs to create a physical/virtual card with a much higher spending limit than the ones provided by the banks. The cards can be funded with Nigerian Naira which gives holders a spending limit of up to $10,000 monthly to spend on Facebook Ads, Wise, Instagram Ads, Google Ads, Alibaba, Wave, Shopify etc.

Pros of Vella

• Offers a wide range of financial services all from one platform
• Naira for dollar payment service with much higher monthly limits than traditional banks.
• Higher interest rates on savings up to 15%.
• High loan amounts up to 20 million naira at competitive interest rates.

Cons

• No in-branch physical customer service.
• high exchange rates. It charges the black market exchange rate for dollar payments which is usually much higher than the official rate.

What other customers are saying about Vella finance

Users on the android app have this to say about the service;

Joe Christian wrote, “This is a very useless app. How can someone design such a stressful app in this current time. Just on ID verification for hours, app refuse to detect face. By the time it does, it tells you to smile, you will smile for hours, by the time it wants to detect, it logs you out, and you start all over again. Please you can’t be stressing people this much just to use your app, there are better apps out there without stress. It’s simple create an option for upload. I can’t even use yet. Bad 👎”

I Am Elv wrote, “After installing the app on my Infinix note 4, it won’t load pass the starting logo, I complain on their social media ad post for weeks till date no reply; app just lying on my phone, if no reply after few days; I will detect then you’ve lost a customer forever.”

Akwarandu Emere wrote, “Very easy to setup. Account funding is not automatic which is not good at all. When you transfer to them it takes almost a day before they confirm that you will need to border or your money is lost. Update now or I can recommend anyone to this app. Even the N2000 I transferred to my Vela account has not been confirmed till now. I will report this app if nothing is done.” Read more customers’ reviews here.

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