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How payments work here, how inspections work, what we will never ask you for, and what to do the moment somebody asks you for money off the platform.
We take nothing from your booking and nothing from an agent's earnings. So there is no honest reason for anyone to send you an account number, and if somebody does, they are not doing platform business. Report them and stop replying.
Four things. If a message, a call or an email asks you for any of them, it is not us, whatever it looks like.
No Vallo staff member, agent or listing will ever give you a personal or company account number to pay into. Every payment happens inside the platform.
There is no holding fee, no inspection fee, no agency fee and no caution fee payable to us. If somebody asks for one to keep a property for you, that is the moment to report them.
We will never ask for either, on the phone, by email or in a message. Anyone who does is not us.
A conversation that starts on Vallo and moves off it to arrange money is the single clearest warning sign in this market. Keep it here, where there is a record.
Every payment on Vallo goes through the checkout screen with a licensed Nigerian payment processor, using a card, a bank transfer raised by the processor, or your Vallo wallet. There is no other way to pay for a stay here, and there is no step where somebody sends you an account number.
Vallo charges no fees. Not to book, not to list, not to be paid. The total you see before you commit is the agent's own number for that market, whole: the move-in total on a yearly tenancy, the nights and any cleaning charge on a shortlet, the asking price on a sale or a lease. Nothing of ours is added at the end. If your bank or card network takes something of their own, that is theirs and it is named as theirs.
Every payment writes a reference against your booking that you can open from Bookings and from your wallet. If anything goes wrong, that reference is what a person on our side works from. A transfer you made to somebody's personal account has no such record and cannot be traced by us.
A refund lands in your Vallo wallet, which is the fastest route we have, and you move it to your bank from there whenever you want.
Renting a place you have never seen is how most people lose money in this market. The order below is the whole defence, and it costs nothing.
Open the listing and message the agent. Ask about light, water, the road, the gate and anything else that matters to you. Keep the whole conversation on Vallo: it is scanned for account numbers and payment wording, and it is the record if there is ever a dispute.
For a rental, view the property before any money moves, in person or on a video call. Bring somebody with you if you can, and go in daylight. An agent who will not let you inspect before paying is telling you something.
Both sides can record that the inspection happened, in the conversation itself. That record sits with the booking, so nobody can later claim a viewing that did not happen.
Rent is message, inspect, then pay. There is no reserve button on a rental for exactly that reason. Never hand over cash at a viewing, and never pay an inspection fee, a holding fee or an agency fee to anybody.
Before you pay, you can let a hold go at any time and nothing is taken. Once a stay is paid for, this is the schedule, and it is the same on every listing on Vallo.
Cancel more than 72 hours before check-in and the full amount you paid returns to your Vallo wallet, usually within minutes.
Inside the last 72 hours, half comes back to you. The other half stays with the agent, whose nights are now very hard to re-let.
Once check-in day has started the stay is the agent's to keep. If you never got in, or the place was not what was listed, do not cancel: report it, and a person looks at the booking.
Refunds return to your Vallo wallet, which is the fastest route, and you can move wallet money to your bank from there. The 72 hour window is measured to check-in at 3pm Lagos time.
The same schedule is shown on every listing and on your booking, against your own dates and your own total. Read the full cancellation policy.
Every listing carries a report control, and the contact form reaches the same queue. You do not need proof and you will not be charged for being wrong. These are the reasons you can choose from, and they are the same words the queue is sorted by.
An account number, a transfer, or anything that skips the platform.
The place, the price or the person does not add up.
Anything that made you feel unsafe, in the property or in the messages.
The photos, the size, the address or the amenities are wrong.
Already let, no longer on the market, or the dates are never free.
Wording or images that should not be on the platform.
The same property is listed more than once.
Tell us in your own words below.
A report about being asked to pay outside Vallo, or about anything unsafe, is answered within 4 hours. Everything else is answered within 1 day. A listing can be taken out of search while we look at it, and the person who reported it is never named to the person reported.
A Nigerian bank can sometimes place a lien on a receiving account if you report a fraudulent transfer quickly. Call your bank first, before anything else, and ask them to raise a dispute on the transfer.
Send us the listing link, the account details you were given and the messages. We cannot recover money that never came through the platform, and we will not pretend otherwise, but we can remove the account, hold the listing, and stop the same person from doing it to the next person.
Screenshots, the account number, the phone number, the transfer receipt. Do not delete the conversation. If the police or your bank ask, that is the file.
Not sure whether something is a scam? Ask us before you pay, not after.
