On February 2, 2026, the Central Financial institution of Nigeria (CBN) launched its Fintech Coverage Perception Report, developed by a survey of fintech executives, a closed-door stakeholder workshop in June 2025, and the CBN Fintech Roundtable in October 2025. The report is the clearest sign but that the regulator is actively designing the subsequent part of progress for the ecosystem it oversees.
Nigeria’s fintech credentials aren’t in query. The nation rolled out nationwide real-time funds in 2011, years earlier than the USA or India. The report reveals that near 11 billion transactions had been processed by the Nigeria Inter-Financial institution Settlement System (NIBSS) Instantaneous Fee platform in 2024, up from 5 billion in 2022. That yr, Nigerian startups raised over $520 million in fairness funding.
The brand new playbook
The report’s proposals draw visibly from the BVN implementation template. The flagship concept is a Standing Fintech Engagement Discussion board, modelled on the Bankers’ Committee, assembly quarterly for two-way dialogue and coverage co-creation. Alongside it, the report proposes a Single Regulatory Window to coordinate licensing throughout companies, and a Compliance-as-a-Service (CaaS) utility, a shared platform that might let fintechs meet reporting obligations centrally quite than constructing duplicative techniques. Each echo the BVN’s core logic: construct the infrastructure as soon as, let the entire trade use it.
The report additionally requires increasing the CBN’s regulatory sandbox to cowl synthetic intelligence (AI), cross-border funds, and embedded finance, with a “test-then-codify” method that converts sandbox learnings into formal guidelines. And it lays out a phased timeline: engagement discussion board and open banking roadmap within the first three months, sandbox growth and regulatory passporting consultations inside 9 months, a formalised Fintech Advisory Council inside eighteen.
The report acknowledges the danger immediately. To protect in opposition to stalling, it proposes a Fintech Reform Supply Secretariat inside the CBN, warning that with out such a construction, “there’s a excessive threat that implementation efforts stall.”
A regulator experimenting and implementing
The CBN has a observe file of daring regulatory bets that in the end reshape markets, even when the trail is bumpy. Its cashless coverage, launched in 2012, took a decade of iteration earlier than POS transactions hit 18 trillion naira in 2024. Its preliminary restrictions on crypto gave method in December 2023 to a structured licensing framework underneath the Cardoso administration. And the Financial institution Verification Quantity, launched in 2014 with the Bankers’ Committee as a co-owner, is now the biometric spine of Nigerian digital finance with over 67.8 million clients registered. The through-line is a regulator that learns, adapts, and finally lands on the precise framework. The fintech report suggests the CBN is making use of that very same intuition earlier this time, beginning in partnership mode.
The fintech report reads like an establishment that has studied its personal file. The CBN is listening, and this report is the CBN’s bid to positively shift right into a partnership and implementation machine.
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