The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) announced that Nigeria has launched its National Payment Stack (NPS), a new unified infrastructure for digital payments, designed to accelerate transactions and to strengthen interoperability between banks and fintechs.

Nigeria is modernizing its payments infrastructure with the National Payment Stack. The first live transaction took place on Friday November 7, 2025, between the fintech PalmPay and Wema Bank, and took place “in a few milliseconds” with settlement instant, according to the NIBSS statement. The new platform is created under supervision of the Bank Central Nigeria (CBN) , NPS succeeds NIBSS Instant Payments (NIP), implemented in 2011. This system had made Nigeria a African pioneer in instant transfers, but it had become difficult to adapt to the rapid growth of digital payments and diversification actors.

Nigeria, Africa's largest economy, hopes thus strengthening financial inclusion in a country where more than 38 million of adults remain unbanked.

Noted that this launch took place a few weeks after that of the PI-SPI regional instant payments system in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), coordinated by the BCEAO .