Piggyvest Review: Is it a scam, Everything You Need To Know
By: Oghenekevwe King
Tags: Piggyvest Review, Piggyvest, Nigeria, Is Piggyvest A Scam, Finance

Credit: Piggyvest

Many of you might have heard of PiggyVest on the web or by word of mouth, well this is a complete guide on everything you need to know about PiggyVest, what it is, how can it help you, how can make money from it or is it just another online scam?

What is it?

Piggyvest (formally Piggybank) is basically a type of online bank. It started in January 2016 as Piggybank.ng; as an online savings and investment platform, and in April 2019 was renamed asPiggyVest. They are the largest online savings and investment platform in Nigeria and they boast of saving over a billion naira worth of customers money every month.

Piggyvest has been featured on a number of reputable platforms including Forbes and Techcrunch they also received the 2020 Users’ Choice Award as best Nigerian app built for Nigerians by Nigerians on Techpoint Africa.

What services do they offers?

They basically offer two services Savings and Investments. In Savings you can automatically save money and earn interest on your savings; and Investments where you invest in low to medium risk investment options and earn interest on your investments. See these services better explained.

Saving options

PiggyVest has five saving types: Piggybank Savings, SafeLock Savings, Target savings, Flex account savings and the Flex dollar savings. You can have any or all of these types of Saving options at once when you open an account.

Credit: Piggyvest

1.Piggybank Savings: This is the main savings account on PiggyVest, you can save automatically by setting up Autosave tor manually saving using QuickSave — more on that below. You get up to 8% interest per annum on the funds in your Piggybank Savings account. Interests are paid on the 1st of every new month into a separate kind of account, Flex account where could easily get access to it for free.

Although there are one major thing you need to know about the Piggybank savings account is that you cannot withdraw your fund anytime you like; you are given four days in a year where you can withdraw for free (March 31st, June 30th, September 30th, and December 31st) or you can set your own withdrawal date which must be at least three months after your last withdrawal. Withdrawals outside approved/set withdrawal days will cost 5% of the fund being withdrawn. Funds withdrawn are sent to your bank account.

2.SafeLock: This is like a fixed deposit account but on PiggyVest you get paid interest instantly to your Flex account once the SafeLock is activated. You can then withdraw the interests anytime you like. PiggyVest pays

- 6% per annum for savings between 10–30 days.

- 7% for savings between 31–60 days.

- 9% for savings between 61–90 days and;

- 10% for savings between 90 days-1 year;

- 12.5% for savings between 1 year-2 years;

- 26–36% for savings over 2 years.

A SafeLock account is an account where you can transfer money to from your Piggybank to earn a higher quick interest. Or if you need to set money aside so you cannot get access to it. All funds in a SafeLock account cannot be withdrawn until the set duration elapses then the funds are transferred to your Flex account.

PS: — You can have multiple SafeLock accounts set for different duration.

3. Target savings: As the name implies, this is a type of savings where you save for a particular goal it could be a car, house, wedding, vacation, event etc. You can even save as a group and invite a friend to save with you and money is deducted from them also. You can set how much and how often daily/weekly/monthly you want to save for the target. You still get paid 8% interest on your target savings paid in parts daily to your Flex account. You can have multiple targets.

4. Flex account: This is the account where all interests on Piggybank, SafeLock and Target savings account are paid and can be withdrawn from anytime without any charges. Also on withdrawal days for you Piggybank account when you withdraw, the money goes straight to your Flex account then you can use anytime.

5. Flex Dollar: This is a rather recent addition to the Piggyvest lineup, it gives you the opportunity to save fund in a stable currency like the US Dollar or the Euro. It is a good option since the value of the naira has been falling in recent times as at November 2020 exchange rate in parallel market was N500 to $1 (source). So to keep your wealth from taking a hit due to naira reducing value you could you consider investing in US Dollars or Euro.

P.S: Ensure you check the current exchange rates before you take this route in case the naira value may be appreciating also.

Note: All interest rates where taken as at December 2020.

Funding options

Before I mention funding options I should say that there are NO bank charges whatsoever for any payments on PiggyVest. Moving on there are two ways to fund your accounts

-AutoSave: This is their most advertised funding option on the platform where you set a particular amount to be deducted from your account either on a daily, weekly or monthly basis on any particular day or time you choose, maybe 6am every morning, 7pm every Sunday evening or 1st of every month.You can set a particular target that the money should get to maybe for a new car or a new house; or just let it be an automatic money saver for you.

PS:

-The money will be collect via your debit card, so you should get a valid debit card.

-In case you miss a day/week/month you will not be penalized or automatically charged for those period. It just continues as it where set but if you need to make up for it you can use QuickSave.

- you can start as low as N50 per day, N800 per week and N3000 per month.

-QuickSave: This is another saving option on PiggyVest where you manually save money into your Piggybank savings. Maybe you missed a day/week/month in your AutoSave target or you just don’t want monies to be automatically deducted from you account you can use this method to save on PiggyVest.

Investments options (Investify)

Investify is a PiggyVest feature which allows users to earn more on their savings by investing their Piggybank savings on pre-vetted, low to medium risk, primary and secondary investment opportunities. On PiggyVest you get 12–25% profit on investments and on maturity of the investment — usually between 6–12 months, you are paid both your capital and profit.

Credit: Piggyvest

PiggyVest assures that all investments on their platform are pre-vetted to ensure insurance against loss. On the investment page you can even see that all investments are insured by known insurance companies and depending on the type of investment, Capitals are refunded in case the investment fails or is met by an unexpected incident like flood, fire etc. But if you’re investing huge funds and want more protection on your investment then PiggyVest also has ‘PiggyVestExtra’ protection which guarantees insurance on your capital on investments.

How do I earn on PiggyVest?

You can earn on PiggyVest by these three ways.

1. Interest on savings: You earn 8% interests on funds in your Piggybank and Target savings and up to 12.5% on funds in a SafeLock. So let’s say you invest

N1 million in a SafeLock for 91 days (10% interest) = N100K interest.

Then maybe you have 5 SafeLocks worth N1 million each then in 90days you get

100 x 5 = 500K interest in 91 days.

Good returns for money that might have just been lying in your bank account.

2. Profit on Investments: If your looking for investments then you can get up to 24% profit on your investment paid with the capital after maturity of the investment.

3. Refer and earn: You could earn a N1000 SafeLock bonus for referring anyone to PiggyVest with your special link. The bonus can be withdrawn after your set SafeLock period elapses. In doing this the person referred also gets a N1000 SafeLock bonus which they can easily be redeemed by having at least N1000 in any PiggyVestsavings or investment products (Piggybank, SafeLock, Target savings and Investify). You can get your N1000 SafeLock bonus signing up with this link https://piggyvest.com/l/71256b4

Is PiggyVest for me?

- If your finding it hard purposely putting money away every week or month for savings then you should try out PiggyVest.

- If your looking for a way to save up for a particular goal or event and you want to do that seamlessly then PiggyVest comes in handy.

- Or if you’re looking to expand your investment Portfolio and get some money on your capital you can do that with PiggyVest.

Is PiggyVest a Scam

Definitely NOT! Far from it; infact, it is two great things

1. It is a great way for those battling with their savings to seamlessly without much consideration about it, you can set money to be deducted from your account every month as your monthly savings or however you like it; you also get interest on your savings.

2. It’s also a great way to earn some extra cash on funds which you might normally just leave in your bank account.

One might wonder how PiggyVest manages to pay interest on Savings with little to no charges on their platform. Well since PiggyVest is an ONLINE financial institution they have less overhead cost since they don’t have various branches to run and like most banks we know they might probably invest monies in their long term savings on businesses, agriculture, real estate etc and get profit back before the owner actually gets need of it.

PiggyVest asset manager AIICO is registered and licensed by Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and all financial information are encrypted and stored to PCI DSS Level 1 complaint standards the highest possible ratings in the electronic payment processing industry and all information are transmitted through 256-bit HTTPS SSL connection.

PiggyVest can be accessed online or on the PiggyVest app for Android and iOS.

You can sign up and install the app by clicking here

I think I have mentioned every major thing to know, their User Interface is quite user friendly so you should be able to figure out anything not mentioned here on your own or click the link above for more information.