Nigeria

Nigeria remains the undisputed leader in Africa in terms of real-time payments volume and growth forecasts. The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) launched NIBSS Instant Payments (NIP) in July 2011, which has transformed the way Nigerians pay and conduct their financial affairs. NIBSS is supported by all commercial banks, micro-finance banks, and mobile money operators and can be used via different modalities, including internet and mobile banking, bank branches, kiosks, mobile USSD, point-of-sale terminals, and ATMs, which helped NIP to achieve high adoption and usage rates.

The COVID-19 pandemic also encouraged Nigerian consumers to shift from cash to electronic payment methods, which further supported real-time payments growth. NIBSS launched NQR, an interoperable national QR-code standard, in March 2021 to facilitate instant P2B and P2P payments by scanning QR codes. These changes have had a significant impact — in 2023, 27.7% of transactions in the country were made using real-time payments and this is expected to increase to 50.1% by 2028. In Nigeria, real-time payments are quickly becoming a viable alternative to cash, historically the dominant choice for payments in the country.