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How payments work here on both sides, how inspections work before a tenancy, what a stay is protected by instead, 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.
Vallo never holds your money. When you pay, the owner's or agent's share goes straight to their bank account through our payment processor, in the same transaction. Every payment on Vallo goes through the checkout screen with a licensed Nigerian payment processor, using a card or a bank transfer raised by the processor. That is true on both sides: a hotel room for Friday and a flat for the year are paid the same way, and there is no step on either where somebody sends you an account number.
Vallo charges no fees to look, to book or to list, and its commission is zero. The Vallo Guarantee contribution, 1 to 2 percent of a payment, comes out of the lister's share into a separate reserve. The total you see before you commit is the lister'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. Where an agent charges a fee of their own it is theirs, it belongs on the listing and not at the door, and it is named as theirs. 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 too.
Every payment writes a reference against your booking that you can open from Bookings and from Agreements. 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 goes back to the card or bank account you paid with, through our payment processor. Banks usually show it within 5 to 10 working days. Vallo keeps no balance for you, so there is nothing to withdraw and nothing sitting with us.
The Vallo Guarantee: between 1 and 2 percent of every payment is set aside in a separate reserve, kept apart from Vallo's own money. If something covered goes wrong, you can claim from it in the 72 hours after you move in or check in, up to what you paid for that booking. A person at Vallo reviews every claim before anything is paid.
A restaurant reservation is a request, not a payment. You ask for a date, a time and a party size, the restaurant answers, and you pay the restaurant when you eat. Nobody on Vallo has any reason to take money from you for a table, and anybody asking for one is not doing platform business.
Renting a place you have never seen is how most people lose money in this market. The order below is the whole defence on the Property side, and it costs nothing.
Open the listing and message whoever put it up, whether that is an owner, an agent or a host. 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 or a sale, 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. Anybody who will not let you inspect before paying is telling you something. A stay is the other way round, because you cannot inspect a hotel room in Enugu from Lagos: there you pay on Vallo first, and the cancellation schedule and the report route are what protect you instead.
The inspection report is eight items with photographs: the outside, the inside, the kitchen, the bathrooms, the utilities, the appliances, safety and an overall verdict. You submit it from the inspection itself. It is the record of what the place was like, and it is what any Guarantee claim is compared with.
From the report an agreement is drawn up with the figures from the listing. You and the owner or agent each confirm the same version, and a person at Vallo reviews it. Payment opens only once it is approved, and both of you are told by email and in the app.
Rent is message, inspect, agree, then pay. There is no reserve button on a rental for exactly that reason. Never hand over cash at an inspection. Vallo charges no inspection fee. Viewing a property through Vallo is free. Keep every message, agreement and payment on Vallo. Vallo is not responsible for anything arranged, discussed or paid outside the platform.
Before you pay, you can let a hold go at any time and nothing is taken. Once a stay is paid for, these are the terms it was priced under, and they do not change after you pay.
Cancel more than 72 hours before check-in and the full amount you paid goes back to the card or account you paid with. Support decides within five Nigerian business days of your ask.
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.
Ask from the booking and support decides within five Nigerian business days. A refund it decides on goes back to the card or account you paid with; banks usually show it within 5 to 10 working days. Hours are 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.
