Trust is cracking in Nigeria’s N1.07 quadrillion payment system

Nigeria’s digital financial ecosystem processes over N1.07 quadrillion in electronic payment transactions annually, but the rapid growth has not translated into stronger public confidence in the system.

According to a new policy report titled Trust Architecture in Platform-Led Finance: Structural Governance Imperatives for Nigeria’s Digital Financial Ecosystem, industry leaders rated trust resilience in the system at just 5.4 out of 10.

The report produced by Bridgforte found that despite Nigeria emerging as one of Africa’s most advanced digital payments markets, unresolved transaction failures, weak dispute resolution mechanisms and fragmented accountability continue to undermine trust in digital financial services.

The assessment was based on insights from senior executives across banks, fintech companies, payment infrastructure providers, regulators and development finance institutions who evaluated the resilience of Nigeria’s digital financial ecosystem.

What the report is saying

The report found that the biggest threats to confidence are not fraud or artificial intelligence, but everyday operational challenges.

• “Service reliability and dispute resolution are the primary drivers of confidence erosion, far outweighing concerns about fraud, data privacy, and artificial intelligence,” the report stated.

The report said the average trust resilience score of 5.4 out of 10 should not be interpreted as a neutral assessment but as a warning from leaders closest to Nigeria’s financial system.

• “A middling score might appear inconclusive. It is not. These are the chief executives, board directors, and senior institutional leaders closest to the system’s performance and most invested in its credibility,” the report said.

The report argued that Nigeria’s financial sector has largely solved the problem of moving money digitally but now faces a more fundamental challenge of convincing consumers to trust those systems.

• “The question for Nigeria’s financial ecosystem is no longer how to move money. It is how to build the confidence that makes people willing to let go of cash,” the report stated.

It found that transaction failures and service reliability were ranked as the biggest threats to trust, ahead of dispute resolution, fraud, cybersecurity, data privacy and artificial intelligence.

According to the report, customers judge digital financial systems not by whether failures occur, but by how institutions respond when they happen.

• “What matters for confidence is not simply whether systems fail, but how they behave when they do,” it said.

The report concluded that trust should no longer be treated as an outcome of technological innovation but as the operating foundation of the financial system.

• “Trust is not a feature of the financial market. It is one of its operating conditions. The gap between what the system can do technically and what it can sustain in public confidence is the defining governance challenge of this phase of Nigeria’s financial development,” it said.

More insights

Beyond measuring confidence, the report identified several structural weaknesses affecting Nigeria’s digital financial ecosystem.

It said identity infrastructure should be treated as a foundational public utility because fragmented identity systems weaken fraud prevention, customer protection and institutional accountability.

The report also warned that financial institutions currently collaborate less effectively than the fraud networks targeting them, largely due to weak information-sharing mechanisms and competitive barriers.

It called for mandatory fraud intelligence sharing and stronger ecosystem-wide coordination.

The report further urged regulators to adopt more outcome-based, system-wide supervision that focuses on resilience across the financial ecosystem rather than oversight of individual institutions alone.

What you should know

The findings come as Nigeria’s digital finance ecosystem grapples with a broader trust challenge.

Industry data shows that while reported digital payment fraud losses fell by more than 50% to N25.85 billion in 2025 from N52.26 billion in 2024, the decline does not necessarily signal a reduction in risk, as fraud schemes are becoming more targeted, sophisticated and financially damaging.

The report found that reported fraud losses have increased by about 350% since 2020, even as the number of reported cases declined by approximately 31%, suggesting that fewer attacks are resulting in larger financial impacts.