By Olatunbosun Obafemi
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has directed all financial institutions and licensed payment operators to fully migrate to the ISO 20022 standard for payment messaging by October 31, 2025.
The directive, issued in a circular signed by Rakiya Yusuf, Director of the Payments System Supervision Department, covers commercial banks, microfinance banks, mobile money operators, and other stakeholders in the payments ecosystem.
ISO 20022 is the globally accepted framework for financial messaging and has become the international benchmark, in line with the migration timeline set by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).
According to the circular, compliance validation exercises will begin on October 20. By the October 31 deadline, all domestic and international payment messages must strictly adhere to the ISO 20022 format as required by the CBN and SWIFT.
“All institutions shall ensure complete and accurate population of mandatory data elements, including payer and payee identifiers, merchant and agent details, as well as transaction metadata,” the bank stated.
The directive also includes new compliance measures. All payment terminals must be equipped with native geolocation services supported by dual-frequency GPS receivers. Terminals are to be registered with a Payment Terminal Service Aggregator (PTSA) and tagged with the precise latitude and longitude of their business location.
In addition, Point of Sale (PoS) terminals and applications must be certified by the National Central Switch (NCS). This process involves integrating the NCS Software Development Kit (SDK) for geolocation monitoring and geofencing, with a maximum radius of 10 meters permitted for merchant operations.
The CBN has also set Android OS version 10 as the minimum requirement for all payment devices. Existing PoS terminals must be geo-tagged within 60 days, while new devices must be geo-tagged before certification and activation. Devices not routed through a PTSA will be blocked from processing transactions.
The apex bank said the reforms are aimed at enhancing transaction integrity, preventing fraud, and improving data quality across Nigeria’s payments infrastructure.
