Official vs parallel naira exchange rate: what each number means

Official. The reference rate a central bank publishes — in Nigeria, the Central Bank of Nigeria. It is a real, authoritative number, and it is not a price at which a member of the public can buy dollars from the central bank. Modan records it with rate_type: official.

Interbank. The wholesale price at which banks and other institutions deal with each other. The window's name and mechanics have changed over the years, which is why Modan labels by the *kind* of price (interbank) rather than by the name of a venue.

Retail. What a bank, an IMTO (international money transfer operator) or a fintech quotes to a customer for an actual transfer. This is the price most people mean when they ask "what is the rate today?", and it is the one Modan tracks provider by provider.

Parallel. The informal or street market print. Modan records it where a tracked source publishes it and labels it parallel; it is a price observation, not a recommendation.

Each price answers a different question. The official rate reflects policy and the central bank's own operations; the interbank rate reflects what institutions can source at size; a retail quote adds the provider's margin, its funding cost and the fee it chooses to bury in the rate; the parallel print reflects what buyers who cannot access the other three will pay. When access to the formal market is constrained the gaps widen, and when it is liberalised they narrow — but they rarely close entirely, because the fourth price still carries a convenience premium.

A consequence for anyone comparing numbers: two rates of different kinds are not "a spread" in any useful sense. A retail quote that sits 300 basis points from an official reference tells you about access, not about whether the provider is expensive.

Retail, interbank and P2P prices are executable: a customer or an institution can deal at them, subject to eligibility and fees. Official and parallel prints are reference prices. Modan therefore never crowns an official or parallel print as the best rate on a corridor — on the corridor pages they are shown, labelled "ref", and excluded from the *Best* tag and from best on the convert endpoint. Naming a central bank's reference as the best available rate would be recommending a price nobody can get.

Open a corridor such as GBP to NGN. Every tracked provider appears with its latest observed rate, its fee, and a spread in basis points measured against the best rate *of the same kind* — so a corridor with retail quotes and an official print carries a 0.0 bps for each. The vs Mid column is a separate measure: the distance from an independent mid-market reference that Modan sources apart from any provider and refreshes hourly. Reference prints show the label of their type instead of a spread.

Every number carries its observation time. Rates are re-checked roughly every 15 minutes and each observation is kept, so the page is a timestamped record rather than a live estimate.

• Compare like with like: a retail quote against other retail quotes, an interbank print against interbank prints.
• Compare net of fees for the amount you are sending — a better headline rate with a higher fee can deliver less. The convert endpoint does this arithmetic per provider.
• Compare at the same moment. A rate without a timestamp is a rumour; on Modan every observation has one.