RRO Autos is a Nigerian vehicle import business founded by Raji Rasheed, who sources and sells cars directly from US auctions, including Copart, IAA, and Manheim. Over 9 years, Raji has built the business from a campus side hustle to a full auction-to-Nigeria import operation, and switching how he pays for his vehicles turned out to be the change that mattered most.

The Story of RRO Autos

Raji’s introduction to the world of cars didn’t start with auctions or auto-shipping. It started at Olabisi Onabanjo University, where most students who owned cars had no real knowledge of how to maintain or upgrade them. Raji did. He’d spent enough time around Ladipo market, Nigeria’s biggest hub for auto parts and accessories, to know his way around a car pimping job or an accessory upgrade, and he marketed his services to fellow students based on that experience.

That early hustle taught him something valuable: people needed a middleman they could trust. So he moved from fixing up cars to sourcing them, connecting students with dealers who had vehicles to sell.

The trouble was, most of the car dealers he needed weren’t in Ogun State. Communicating with dealers outside his state over the phone wasn’t cutting it, so Raji started travelling to Lagos himself to meet dealers face to face and negotiate directly.

That solved one problem and created the next one. A contact in the United States began sourcing and shipping vehicles to Raji, who resold them to his clients back home. But the cars that showed up often weren’t what he’d asked for, either the condition was wrong, or the specification didn’t match the specifications he’d paid for. Buying blind, through someone else’s eyes, wasn’t sustainable.

So Raji cut out the middleman entirely. He opened accounts on Copart, IAA, and Manheim and started bidding on and importing vehicles himself. Nine years later, that’s still how RRO Autos runs.

RRO Autos’ Challenge: Paying US Auctions from Nigeria

For a long time, paying for the right car was the hard part.

Raji explains that his auction payments went through local banks. However, this had its drawbacks. 

Banks in Nigeria have historically capped how much can move out of a domiciliary account when the funds come from a cash deposit, which made it difficult to move the kind of volume auction payments demand. A single vehicle can cost more than that limit before shipping and fees are even added, so Raji regularly found himself splitting payments or waiting on separate deposits just to fund one purchase.

Even after clearing those hurdles, the money still had to reach the auctions account. Local bank transfers to Copart and IAA routinely took days to arrive. 

In an auction system where payment windows are short and unforgiving, those days were expensive.

The combination of slow transfers, capped limits, and unpredictable processing pushed Raji into debt, because his money couldn’t move fast enough to close the deal.

How Raji Found Clea

Raji first heard about Clea during a session with the team. Rather than move a full auction payment over straight away, he tested it with a smaller amount first, just to see how it performed.

That first payment went through smoothly and fast. Compared to sourcing dollars, carrying cash to the bank, and waiting days to find out if a transfer had even been credited, the difference was immediate. He’s used Clea to pay Copart and pay IAA ever since.

Impact on RRO Autos’ Payment Challenges

Switching to Clea has changed how RRO Autos operates day to day, giving Raji a payment process that keeps pace with how fast auctions actually move.

Here’s what Raji says:

“Clea has helped me a lot. Everything is fast.”

That speed has also brought a level of visibility Raji didn’t have before. With his previous banks, a transfer would leave his account until it either arrived or didn’t. With Clea, he can track exactly where a payment is at every stage, from the moment he sends it to the moment the auction platform confirms receipt.

“I know at every stage of the transfer, right until it’s delivered.”

The exchange rate has had a similar effect on how he plans. For a business where FX costs impact margins directly, a predictable rate allows Raji to factor payment costs into a bid with confidence, rather than treating the exchange rate as a variable discovered after the fact.

Paying US Auctions From Nigeria

Car dealers who buy from Copart and IAA are working against payment windows that don’t leave much room for delay. A slow bank transfer can mean a storage fee, a penalty, or a sale that’s cancelled before the money even arrives, the kind of mistakes that cost Nigerian car importers more than they realise until it’s too late. 

Clea gives car dealers a direct way to pay these auctions and US suppliers from Nigeria, ensuring funds arrive while the deal is still open.