The Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) and Transactility have launched the National Payment Stack (NPS), an instant payments platform designed to modernise Nigeria’s financial infrastructure.
The partnership between NIBSS and Transactility has resulted in the delivery of this next-generation system, which is intended to serve the country’s evolving digital payments ecosystem.
Built on the international ISO-20022 messaging standard, the National Payment Stack provides a high-capacity framework for richer and more secure data exchange during financial transactions.
The adoption of the ISO-20022 standard represents a technical shift for Nigerian financial institutions. Unlike older messaging formats, this standard allows for significantly more detailed information to be embedded within each payment instruction. This increased data capacity is intended to reduce transaction failures, improve the accuracy of automated reconciliations, and provide better tools for real-time fraud monitoring.
Standardising Nigeria’s digital payment infrastructure
The deployment of the NPS follows increased demand for more reliable digital payment rails within the Nigerian economy. By integrating the ISO-20022 standard, the NIBSS-developed platform aligns the local ecosystem with international best practices, which facilitates smoother cross-border transactions and more efficient domestic settlements between banks and fintechs.
NIBSS Managing Director and CEO, Premier Oiwoh, and Transactility Founder and CTO, Alejandro Revilla, oversaw the delivery of the project. The collaboration combines NIBSS’s role as the central hub for Nigerian inter-bank settlements with Transactility’s technical expertise in advanced payment messaging systems.
For end-users, the implementation of the stack is expected to result in fewer failed transfers and more transparent tracking of funds. For financial institutions, the richer data sets provided by the NPS allow for more robust compliance and risk management protocols, as transaction details become more granular and easier to verify against regulatory requirements.
As the industry migrates to the new stack, financial institutions will be required to update their internal systems to ensure full compatibility with the new messaging requirements of the National Payment Stack.
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