The rollout of Nigeria’s new sovereign digital infrastructure, the National Payment Stack, has recorded rapid commercial adoption in its early operational phase, processing 26.55 million transactions valued at N1.4tn across 48 participating institutions.

Developed by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc to modernise the nation’s financial ecosystem, the multi-currency architecture bridges transaction processing and payment intelligence while consolidating payments, identity, and data onto a single rail designed to succeed the legacy NIBSS Instant Payment system.

Commercial banks and fintechs are already driving significant scale across the network. First Bank of Nigeria currently leads the industry in total transaction volume processed on the new platform, while Fidelity Bank holds the top spot for overall transaction value. Other major early adopters powering network activity include Guaranty Trust Bank, Sterling Bank, Access Bank, and Moniepoint.

The platform introduces structured ISO 20022 data architecture, enabling metadata-rich transactions that automate corporate reconciliation, streamline merchant collections, and power request-to-pay invoicing. It also unifies single transfers and high-volume corporate disbursements onto one rail, backed by embedded security features such as automated sanction screening, account validation, end-to-end encryption, and in-flight risk scoring to flag potential fraud before execution.

Highlighting the transformative impact of the new infrastructure, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NIBSS, Premier Oiwoh, emphasised the platform’s role in shifting the national payments landscape towards deeper intelligence and efficiency.

He said, “The National Payment Stack represents an economic catalyst moving our financial infrastructure from basic transaction processing to comprehensive payment intelligence.

“By delivering an ISO 20022-compliant, multi-currency rail, we are laying the groundwork for unprecedented interoperability, heightened security, and seamless regional trade.”

Complete ecosystem readiness now depends on full participant alignment across technical and operational domains, with NIBSS urging all financial services institutions to activate related debit and credit processing rails to prevent platform congestion.

Supporting this transition, the Director of Payments System Supervision at the Central Bank of Nigeria, Dr Rakiya Yusuf, reaffirmed the apex bank’s full regulatory backing for mandatory integration as the sector prepares for the ultimate decommissioning of the 15-year-old legacy NIP rail.