first bank of nigeria
First Bank of Nigeria is the country's oldest bank, founded in 1894, and calling it a new fintech app because it looks old fashioned is the mistake to avoid.
In plain English
Here is a mistake a lot of younger account holders make without realising it. They see the First Bank app looking a bit dated next to the sleek new fintech apps, and they calmly conclude that the bank itself must be small, struggling, or behind the times. Then they move their salary account to a newer name and feel modern for doing it.
That assumption gets the story backwards. First Bank of Nigeria was founded in 1894 by a Scottish businessman named Alfred Jones, which makes it the oldest bank in the country by more than three decades. It has outlived colonial rule, civil war, multiple currency changes, and every banking reform Nigeria has thrown at its financial sector since independence. An old app interface is not the same thing as an old, weak institution.
Think about what that history actually means in practice. A trader in Kano who has banked with First Bank for thirty years, whose father banked there before him, is not choosing the bank for its design. He is choosing it because the branch network reaches towns that newer digital first banks have never bothered to enter, and because generations of trust do not evaporate just because a screen looks plain.
For someone in London sending money home to a parent in Ibadan, First Bank is often the receiving bank precisely because it is everywhere, from state capitals to smaller towns their relatives actually live in. Reach matters more than app polish when the money has to actually land somewhere useful.
None of this means never question a bank's service. It means separate two different questions: is this institution old, and is this institution weak. With First Bank, the honest answer has always been the first without the second.
A woman in Lagos opens a First Bank account in 1985 for her small fabric business. Forty years later her grandson uses the same bank's mobile app to pay a supplier ₦180,000 in seconds, proof that old roots and new tools can sit in the same institution.
Questions people ask
Is First Bank of Nigeria government owned?
No, it is a privately owned commercial bank listed on the stock exchange through its holding company, FBN Holdings, though it began as a foreign owned institution before Nigerians gradually took control over the decades.
Is First Bank safe to keep money in?
Yes, it is regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria like every other licensed commercial bank, and its long history and size make it one of the most closely watched institutions in the sector, not a hidden risk.
Why does First Bank feel less modern than newer banks?
Because it built its systems and branch culture over more than a century, while newer digital first banks built theirs from scratch in the smartphone era, so the comparison is really old infrastructure versus new infrastructure, not strong versus weak.
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