Author: Victor Ilo
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Regulation, Innovation, and the Battle for Trust in Nigeria’s Payments Space
Nigeria’s digital payments sector is expanding rapidly, but this growth is not without consequences. According to the FITC, financial fraud losses soared to ₦53.4 billion in the first nine months of 2024, a staggering 468% increase from ₦9.4 billion in the same period of 2023. Contributing factors include identity theft, chargeback fraud, and large-scale breaches…
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What ₦828 Trillion Tells Us About the Future of Payments in Nigeria
In the first half of 2024, Nigerians moved ₦828 trillion through internet transfers alone. To put that in perspective, that figure reflects that Nigerians moved more through internet transfers in six months than the country’s annual GDP. It also reflects an 83% increase over internet transfer values recorded in H1 2022, a sign of how…
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Nigeria Payments Report 2025
Building on the foundation of the previous edition, the 2025 edition delivers deeper insight, sharper data, and a new benchmark: the National Payments Scorecard. With expanded coverage of innovation, regulation, and infrastructure, this report examines how players across fintech, banking, and policy are shaping a faster, smarter, and more secure digital payment future. Nigeria Payments…
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Fairmoney’s Journey to Flawless Payments with ZonePOS
Executive Summary:Fairmoney, a prominent Nigerian fintech, grappled with the inherent limitations of conventional payment infrastructure, experiencing transaction failures, chargebacks, and fraud that hindered operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. By integrating ZonePOS, Zone’s cutting-edge decentralised Point-of-Sale (PoS) payment gateway, Fairmoney achieved a paradigm shift in their payment processing. This strategic move resulted in the elimination of…
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Nigeria Payments Outlook 2024
The 2024 edition marked the launch of the annual payment outlook, laying the foundation by exploring Nigeria’s shift from traditional banking to digital-first finance. Covering the structure of the payment ecosystem, key players, consumer behavior, and the role of regulation, it offered a baseline for understanding the market’s rapid transformation. Nigeria Payment Outlook 2024 –…
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Reports
Sharp insights and deep dives on the payment systems, policies, and technologies driving Africa forward. The reports explore the evolving dynamics of Africa’s payments ecosystem, covering infrastructure, interoperability, regulation, and innovation. Grounded in data and shaped by industry context, each report offers a clear, systems-level view of trends, challenges, and opportunities across the financial landscape.
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CBDCs & The Possibility of Financial Inclusion In Africa, Pt.2
In our first post on this topic, we took a look at what Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are and their potential to advance financial inclusion in African countries. We established that CBDCs – and more generally digital currencies – have different applications and use cases, chiefly as the core of more efficient transactions &…
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CBDCs & The Possibilty of Financial Inclusion In Africa, Pt.1
In this part of a 2-part series, we take a look at the potential of CBDCs in guiding African countries toward financial inclusion and efficient delivery of public services. Digital currencies have surged in popularity over the last few years as cryptocurrencies and stablecoins have become more popular. Especially with the substantial market growth of…
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DeFi 2.0: Fully Regulated and Compatible with CBDCs
DeFi 2.0: Fully Regulated and Compatible with CBDCs With traditional finance (TradFi), service delivery relies on conventional financial institutions, which run operations and serve as financial intermediaries. By eliminating dependence on financial intermediaries and leveraging other key characteristics of Blockchain technology, decentralized finance (DeFi) has vast potential to reduce cost, improve utility and enable access…