- Unveils roadmap to clear bottlenecks
BY Bonny Amadi
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has acknowledged that regulatory friction, high compliance costs and slow approval timelines are constraining innovation in Nigeria’s fast-growing fintech sector.
As a result, the Nigerian apex bank has unveiled a policy roadmap aimed at cutting bottlenecks and supporting the next phase of digital financial growth.
In its newly released report, ‘Shaping the Future of Fintech in Nigeria: Innovation, Inclusion and Integrity,’ the apex bank admitted that while Nigeria has built one of Africa’s most advanced fintech ecosystems, regulatory processes have not evolved fast enough to match the speed, scale and complexity of innovation now embedded in the financial system.
Drawing on a nationwide fintech survey and months of stakeholder engagement, the report found that 87.5 percent of fintech operators say compliance costs significantly limit their ability to innovate, while over 60 percent report that regulatory timelines materially delay product launches. More than one-third of respondents said it takes over a year to bring new products to market due largely to licensing and approval bottlenecks.
The CBN noted that perceptions of the regulatory environment are evenly split, with half of fin- tech operators viewing it as enabling and the other half describing it as restrictive, an outcome the bank linked to unclear guidance, fragmented oversight, and inconsistent application of rules across agencies.
Despite these challenges, the report positions fintech not as a risk to be contained but as a strategic partner in deepening financial inclusion, improving efficiency and expanding access to digital services, particularly for underserved populations.
It stresses that Nigeria’s real-time payments infrastructure, processing nearly 11 billion instant transactions in 2024 alone, has made fintech systemically important, demanding a more agile and coordinated regulatory response.
To address these gaps, the CBN outlined a roadmap focused on streamlining approvals, strengthening regulatory coordination, and reducing friction for compliant operators. Key proposals include the creation of a standing CBN–fintech engagement platform, the operationalisation of a Single Regulatory Window to harmonise multi-agency processes, and the deployment of supervisory technology to shorten approval cycles and improve oversight.
The report also proposes shared compliance utilities, such as a compliance-as-a-service model, to ease the regulatory burden on smaller firms while enhancing visibility for supervisors.
In parallel, the CBN signalled plans to accelerate open banking implementation, improve access to affordable digital identity infrastructure, and strengthen interoperability across payment and credit systems.
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