Transactional SMS API Nigeria

Why Nigerian receipts and alerts stall

A receipt that never arrives is a support ticket, then a refund request, then a lost reorder. Most Nigerian delivery failures come down to three things: a single upstream that goes quiet during congestion, a DND filter that treats a misclassified alert as promotional traffic and drops it, and an international aggregator that sends Nigerian SMS as overseas traffic, so it arrives late or not at all.

A Nigeria-ready transactional SMS API uses prepaid local pricing, transactional routing that respects NCC DND rules, and a fallback provider on NG so a primary outage does not stall your checkout, payout, or dispatch flow.

Prepaid transactional SMS and OTP, one set of keys

Robase is one SMS API for Africa: send transactional SMS, and send and verify one-time passcodes, from the same workspace. API keys start with robe_. Create a key in the dashboard at robase.dev/app, then call the REST API or an SDK. Credits are prepaid: you buy a balance and spend it on both transactional SMS and OTP. The transactional SMS API page covers webhooks and delivery status in more depth.

Pricing

One credit is ₦6. Nigeria is 1 credit per message (₦6). There is no monthly fee; you pay for what you send. The same table applies to transactional SMS and OTP, and destinations outside Africa are priced on the same credits, so a United States message is 50 credits (₦300).

Full breakdown on the pricing page.

Automatic provider failover

Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Benin, and Ivory Coast (NG/GH/KE/ZA/BJ/CI) use multi-provider routing: if the primary upstream is unavailable, slow, or returns an error, Robase retries a fallback provider. You do not write retry logic or pick carriers. Routes to the United Kingdom and the United States (GB/US) are currently single-provider.

Developer path

One call: POST /v1/sms/send with the recipient and the message body. Auth is Authorization: Bearer robe_.... Use an E.164 Nigerian number such as +2348012345678. The response includes a message ID you can poll with GET /v1/sms/{id}.

curl -X POST https://api.robase.dev/v1/sms/send \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer robe_your_api_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"phone_number":"+2348012345678","message":"Your order #12345 has shipped. Track it in the app."}'

curl https://api.robase.dev/v1/sms/01HXY... \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer robe_your_api_key"

SDKs

• Node.js: @robasedev/sdk (npm install @robasedev/sdk)
• Go: github.com/mantissatech/robase-sdk-go (go get github.com/mantissatech/robase-sdk-go)
• PHP: robase/sdk (composer require robase/sdk)

Official SDKs are Node.js, Go, PHP. There is no public Python SDK. Request and response shapes, webhooks, and errors are in the API docs.

OTP on the same credits

Signup, login, and 2FA codes use the same robe_ keys and prepaid balance. Two calls: POST /v1/otp/send then POST /v1/otp/verify. A Nigerian OTP costs the same 1 credit (₦6) as a transactional message. The SMS OTP API Nigeria guide covers the verify flow, code length, and expiry in detail.

curl -X POST https://api.robase.dev/v1/otp/send \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer robe_your_api_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"phone_number":"+2348012345678","code_length":6,"ttl_seconds":600}'

curl -X POST https://api.robase.dev/v1/otp/verify \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer robe_your_api_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"otp_id":"01HXY...","code":"123456"}'

Compare providers

See how prepaid credits and failover differ from Termii and Twilio. For Nigeria-specific networks, sender IDs, and NCC notes, use the SMS API in Nigeria page. For DND rules, sender ID registration, and webhooks across the continent, read the transactional SMS API for Africa guide.

FAQ