…The report examines the scale and maturity of Nigeria’s fintech ecosystem, highlighting the country’s leadership in real-time payments and the structural factors shaping recent growth
TUE FEB 03 2026-theGBJournal| The Central Bank of Nigeria has released a comprehensive assessment of Nigeria’s fintech landscape, outlining the priorities needed to sustain innovation, strengthen system integrity, and support the next phase of digital financial growth.
The report examines the scale and maturity of Nigeria’s fintech ecosystem, highlighting the country’s leadership in real-time payments and the structural factors shaping recent growth.
It positions fintech innovation as a complementary force within the financial system, expanding access, efficiency, and reach, while preserving stability and resilience.
Informed by surveys and extensive stakeholder engagement, the report outlines practical policy directions to improve regulatory coordination, strengthen supervisory capability, and support responsible innovation, including cross-border scale.
It underscores interoperability, proportional regulation, and effective execution as critical enablers of sustainable ecosystem development.
”This publication forms part of an ongoing series through which the CBN will continue to engage the financial sector, provide clearer regulatory direction, and support more coordinated execution, the CBN said.
”It is intended to serve as a shared reference point for banks, fintech firms, regulators, infrastructure providers, investors, and partners as Nigeria consolidates its position within the regional and global fintech landscape.”
According to the report, the research points to a compelling opportunity: Nigeria can lead not just in adoption but in the design of the global fintech future, provided it enhances collaboration between regulators and innovators, strengthens infrastructure and policy reforms, and communicates progress with clarity.
Given the scale of Nigeria’s payments volumes, the maturity of its real-time infrastructure, and its experience managing innovation at population scale, the country is increasingly positioned not only as a fast-growing fintech market, but as a reference whose regulatory lessons are relevant to peer emerging and high-growth economies globally.
Today, more than 25% of all electronic transactions in Nigeria are processed via real-time payment channels and through the NIBSS NIP platform. Close to 11 billion transactions were processed in 2024, up from 5 billion transactions in 20222, placing the country among the top adopters globally and a clear leader on the African continent.
This aligns with the Payments System Vision 2025, which sets a target for achieving near-universal e-payment penetration by 2030
Insights emerging from the Central Bank of Nigeria’s engagements with the ecosystem reinforce several priorities for the next phase of ecosystem development, including rising interest in sovereign digital asset frameworks, discussed at an illustrative and exploratory level only, as part of broader conversations on reducing FX leakage and strengthening formal remittance channels.
Key Survey Insights:
Ecosystem Strengths and Challenges
The CBN’s stakeholder survey drew primarily on perspectives from fintech firms, offering a first-hand view of the opportunities and challenges faced by innovators at the frontlines of Nigeria’s ecosystem.
Amid a wealth of insights, the following represent some of
the most significant takeaways:
-Cross-border growth demands coordination: 62.5% of firms plan to expand regionally.
There is strong support for regulatory passporting frameworks to enable seamless, compliant expansion into peer African markets.
-AI and real-time payments are driving the next wave: AI is already widely used in fraud detection and credit scoring. Real-time payments infrastructure
is viewed as both a strength and a model for other digital rails.
-Infrastructure gaps remain a drag: Stakeholders cited the lack of universal access to digital ID verification, limited broadband penetration, incomplete
data-sharing systems, and limited open-data frameworks as barriers to scaling.
-Compliance costs are weighing on innovation: 87.5% of respondents report that the cost of meeting regulatory and risk requirements significantly impacts
their capacity to innovate.
-Time-to-market is a major pain point: 62.5% of firms say regulatory timelines materially impact product rollouts. Over one-third say it takes more than
12 months to bring a new product to market due to
compliance bottlenecks.
-Perceptions of regulation are split: Exactly half of respondents view the regulatory environment as enabling, while the other 50% find it restrictive. This divergence stems from perceived delays in licensing, lack of clarity in guidance, and inconsistent application of rules.
-Strong appetite for regulatory engagement: 75% of respondents favour the creation of regular, high-trust engagement forums with regulators. 100% expressed willingness to collaborate through policy pilots, regulatory sandboxes, or working groups.
Strategic Priorities for Nigeria’s Fintech Future
Based on the survey results and policy analysis, this report identifies three top-level objectives to guide Nigeria’s fintech strategy:
-Enable innovation-friendly regulation: Streamline approval processes, increase regulatory clarity, and deploy supervisory technology (SupTech) to reduce
friction.
-Advance financial inclusion through digital infrastructure: Improve the cost and reliability of API access to national identity systems, strengthen
interoperability across digital platforms, and enhance infrastructure resilience to bridge last-mile gaps.
-Strengthen system integrity and reputation: Modernise consumer protection, enhance AML supervision, and communicate reform outcomes.
With these objectives in focus, and consistent with the Central Bank’s publicly stated commitment to disciplined reform, financial integrity, and evidence-based policy implementation, the report outlines multiple policy initiatives, including a dedicated CBN–fintech engagement platform, a compliance-as-a-service model, a fintech credit guarantee scheme, expansion of open banking, and the piloting of regional passporting agreements.
see link-https://www.cbn.gov.ng/Out/2026/CCD/CBN_FINTECH_REPORT_.pdf
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