Cashley

Cashley Academy

Learn to trade, properly

Short, plain-English guides to buying and selling crypto in Nigeria — written for people who have never done it before. Free, and no account needed to read them.

7 guides

Start here · 4 min read

01. Your first trade, start to finish

If you have never traded crypto before, this is the whole journey in one place. Nothing here needs any prior knowledge.

Create your account

You need an email address and a password. Confirm the email we send you — that alone puts you on the first verification level and lets you start trading small amounts straight away.

Decide which way you are going

Buying means you send Naira and receive crypto in your own wallet. Selling means you send crypto to us and receive Naira. Both start from the same place — the New order button.

Check the rate, then lock it

The rate you see is the rate you get, fixed the moment you create the order. Selling and buying then differ. Selling: you have ten minutes to send the crypto, and that is how long we hold your price. If the clock runs out nothing is lost — the order simply closes and you make a new one at the current rate. Buying: it is paid from your Cashley wallet as the order is created, so there is no clock to beat.

Pay, and upload your proof

Selling: send the crypto to the address on the order, then upload the transaction hash or a screenshot. This is the step people forget — without proof our team has nothing to check, and your order waits. Buying: nothing to upload. The Naira comes out of your Cashley wallet, which you top up separately — and a top-up does need its bank receipt.

A real person checks it

Nothing is ever paid out automatically. A member of our team checks every single order by hand before we send you crypto or credit your Naira. That is slower than a robot and deliberately so: it is the reason a mistake can be caught before it costs you. One step does happen without us: a buy takes the Naira from your Cashley wallet as the order is created. If it is rejected, or you cancel it while it is under review, that money comes back in full — the coin cost and the network fee.

You get paid

A buy sends crypto to the wallet address you gave us. A sell credits the Naira to your Cashley wallet, ready to trade again straight away — moving it on to your bank is a separate withdrawal request. The order moves to Completed and stays in your history for good.

Money · 2 min read

02. Why the rate is locked, and why it expires

The single most misunderstood part of selling here. Understanding it will save you money.

The price you see is the price you get

Crypto prices move every second. If we quoted you a rate and then settled at whatever the price was when your transfer landed, you would never know what you were actually getting. So the moment you create an order, your rate is fixed.

The deadline is on selling, and it is ten minutes

A locked rate is a promise we hold open while you send the crypto, and we carry the market risk for as long as it stays open. That is only fair for a short window, so a sell order lasts ten minutes. Create it when you are ready to send, not while you are still deciding. A buy has no clock at all — it comes out of your Cashley wallet as it is created, so there is nothing to hold open.

If it expires, nothing bad happens

An expired sell order is closed, not charged — you never sent anything, so there is nothing to return. You have lost nothing but the time. Start a new one and you will see the current rate.

The buy price and sell price are different

That gap is how Cashley earns on the trade itself — there is no separate commission stacked on top of it. It is the same way every bureau de change in Lagos works, and it is shown to you before you commit. Two other charges are separate from the spread and are also shown before you confirm: the network fee on a buy, and the flat fee on a wallet deposit or withdrawal.

Money · 2 min read

03. Your Naira wallet

A cash balance inside Cashley. Not optional — it is where buying is paid from and where selling pays out to.

What it is for

It is the Naira side of every trade you do here. Buying is paid from this balance — that is the only way to pay for a buy, so you top the wallet up first — and when you sell, the proceeds are credited straight back into it. Keeping a balance means you can trade instantly instead of waiting on a bank transfer each time.

Putting money in and taking it out

Both are requests, not instant actions — a member of our team approves each one. A small flat fee applies to a deposit and to a withdrawal, shown to you before you confirm.

You can only have a few deposits pending at once

Five, and it is deliberate: it keeps the review queue honest and stops a mistaken double-submission from turning into a real double-payment. Wait for one to clear before sending another. Withdrawals are not capped the same way — instead, each one takes the money out of your balance the moment you request it, so sending two by mistake really does hold both amounts until you cancel one.

Your balance is always reconciled

Every naira in your wallet is backed by a line in a permanent transaction record. Nothing is ever adjusted quietly, and you can download your full statement any time from your order history.

Account · 2 min read

04. Verification levels — and why they raise your limit

You can trade from day one. Verifying more raises how much you can move in a single transaction.

How the ladder works

Each level asks for one more piece of identity and unlocks a higher ceiling. The ceiling applies per transaction — that covers crypto orders as well as wallet deposits and withdrawals.
  • Basic— Email verifiedUp to $100
  • BVN verified— Bank Verification Number$100 – $500
  • NIN verified— National Identification Number$500 – $2,000
  • Address verified— Proof of home address$2,000 – $20,000
  • Business verified— CAC certificateAbove $20,000

On a crypto order the limit is measured in dollars at the coin’s price. On a wallet deposit or withdrawal it is the same dollar figure converted at a fixed reference rate we keep for this purpose only — so your Naira ceiling does not move every time the market does.

One identity, one account

A phone number can only belong to one Cashley account — that one is automatic, and a second signup on the same number is refused outright. A BVN or NIN is meant for one account too, and we fingerprint every one we are given: if the same number turns up on another account it is flagged and a compliance officer decides, rather than being waved through. If yours is held up as already used, contact support rather than trying another — we can see what happened and sort it out.

Who can see your documents

Our compliance team, and nobody else on staff. Your ID documents are held in private storage that is not readable from the internet, and support staff cannot open them. Your full BVN or NIN is held only while a reviewer is checking it: once the decision is made, the number itself is erased. What stays afterwards is the last four digits, and a one-way fingerprint of the full number — that fingerprint is what lets us notice the same ID being used on another account, and it cannot be turned back into your BVN by us or by anybody who steals the database.

Trading · 2 min read

05. Selling gift cards

A separate route from crypto, with its own rates. The rules that matter are about the card, not the app.

Pick the brand and tell us the type

Physical card, e-code, or a receipt-backed card — each is priced differently because each carries a different risk of the balance being gone before we redeem it.

Photograph it properly

Clear, well-lit, whole card in frame, code fully readable. Most rejected cards are rejected because nobody could read them, not because anything was wrong with the card.

Never share the code anywhere else first

A gift card code is the money. Anyone who reads it can spend it. Do not send it on WhatsApp, do not post it, and do not give it to someone who says they will “check it for you”.

Wait for redemption

We redeem the card before paying you. If it turns out to be empty or already used, the order is rejected — which is why the code must be unused when you submit it.

Safety · 3 min read

06. Staying safe from scams

Read this one even if you skip the rest. Almost every loss we hear about in Nigerian crypto starts with one of these.

Nobody from Cashley will ever ask for your password

Not support, not on WhatsApp, not “to verify your account”. If someone asks, they are not us. We never need it — our team can help you without it.

Turn on two-factor login

It is in Settings and takes a minute. It means a stolen password alone is not enough to reach your account. This is the single most useful thing you can do for your own security.

Check the address you are sending crypto to, twice

Crypto transfers cannot be reversed by anybody — not by us, not by the network. Compare the first and last several characters against what is on your order screen before you send.

Be suspicious of anyone rushing you

“Send now or you lose the rate” is a pressure tactic. A real Cashley order simply expires and costs you nothing. Urgency is the oldest tool in the scammer’s box.

Do not trade on behalf of someone you met online

If a stranger sends you money to buy crypto for them, you are very likely laundering the proceeds of a fraud, and it is your account and your BVN attached to it. This is the most common way ordinary people end up in real trouble.

Your account, your identity

Never let anyone else use your account and never verify one for somebody else. If your details are on it, everything done with it is yours to answer for.

Extras · 2 min read

07. Referrals, rewards and the leaderboard

The optional parts, explained honestly — including what they are not.

Referrals

Invite someone with your referral link and you earn a share when they trade; you can move those earnings into your wallet once they pass a small minimum. There is also a one-off sign-up bonus, and it is not paid simply for signing up: it needs NIN verification — which exists specifically to stop one person opening many accounts to collect it repeatedly — and it unlocks only once you have traded a certain amount yourself, or referred somebody who has.

Rewards are a separate balance

What you earn from referrals is tracked apart from your cash wallet, so you can always see what came from trading and what came from rewards.

The leaderboard shows codes, not names

Every trader appears as a code such as DY-4821, never as a name. Exact figures are never published: a volume is shown as a broad range, and withheld entirely when the range would fit only one person. The board restarts on the 1st of each month and you get a new code.

What the leaderboard is not

It is a competition, not a privacy feature. It does publish who is ahead of whom. The letters in your code come from your initials, and they are the same every month — so the new code each month is a fresh set of digits, not a fresh identity. If you would rather not be identifiable at all, simply do not aim for the top of the board — nothing else on Cashley depends on it.

Reference

Words you will see

Every bit of jargon on Cashley, in one place.

USDT / USDC

Stablecoins — crypto designed to stay worth about one US dollar. The usual choice for saving or sending value without price swings.

BTC / ETH / SOL / LTC

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Litecoin. Their prices move, sometimes a lot, in both directions.

Wallet address

The long string of letters and numbers that identifies where crypto is sent. Like an account number, except a mistake cannot be reversed.

Network

The road the crypto travels on. The same coin can move on different networks, and sending on the wrong one can lose the money — always use the one shown on your order.

Network fee

A charge added when you buy, covering the cost of sending the coin on-chain. It varies by coin and by network, and it is shown on the order before you confirm — it is separate from the spread.

Rate lock

Your price on a sell order, held still for ten minutes while you send the crypto. A buy has no lock — it is paid from your wallet as it is created.

Spread

The gap between the buy price and the sell price. It is how Cashley earns on a trade, in place of a separate commission on top of it.

KYC

"Know Your Customer" — the identity checks every regulated money business is required to perform.

BVN

Bank Verification Number — the 11-digit number that identifies you across all Nigerian banks.

NIN

National Identification Number — your NIMC identity number.

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