Changed By A Pandemic?

Three ways COVID-19 may be altering perspectives on money in Nigeria.

Kuda App
3 min readJan 22, 2021

The second wave of COVID-19 is sweeping across Nigeria, possibly giving deniers a rethink that maybe, just maybe, this disease that is recorded to have taken millions of lives around the world is quite real after all.

Somehow, it feels like the first half of 2020 is happening all over again but things are not exactly the same.

Last year’s wave caught many people mentally and financially unprepared.

We have since learnt and, hopefully, adjusted our behaviour or at least reconsidered how we live.

While we’d love to remind you that stocking up on masks and hand sanitisers is now as important as having rice at home, let’s focus on some ways the pandemic may be altering perspectives on money.

1. Saving has become a necessity.

We don’t need to be told twice.

More and more people who didn’t care much for budgeting before the trial by COVID-19 now seem eager to make the smart decision of taking out their savings before spending any part of their income.

Some have even scaled down their lifestyle significantly, choosing less expensive options for travel, shopping, housing and other spending categories to increase how much they save.

2. Everyone wants multiple streams of income.

Several ways to get paid.

2020 was a financially unsettling time for a lot of workers and business owners, and the reaction to that insecurity has been strong this year.

Some people who were satisfied with just a 9-to-5 job last year appear to be more interested in launching a startup of their own while they hold on to their office role, entrepreneurs are exploring other lines of business as a backup, and freelancers are on the rise, working for foreign companies from home and probably getting paid through Payoneer on Kuda.

3. Alternative forms of money are in higher demand.

A first.

COVID-19 isn’t the only wave sweeping across the country, there’s a wave of unprecedented interest in cryptocurrency as well.

As at December 2020, Nigeria was reported to have the world’s second-largest Bitcoin trading volume — a 30% increase in that year alone.

We have not been left out of this explosion of crypto trading locally. In September 2020, leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance added Kuda as a payment option for peer-to-peer (P2P) trading on its platform.

While the cryptocurrency market remains as volatile as ever, many young Nigerians are willing to take the risk in the hope of a massive payday or just the prospects of holding a potentially valuable currency and retiring early.

Has COVID-19 changed your perspective on money? We hope it’s for the better.

Stay safe and keep making good choices. 💜

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