The hurdles facing contactless payment adoption across Nigeria

On October 13, CashAfrica revealed a collaboration with Food Concepts, a quick-service dining establishment business, to present mobile tap-to-pay throughout Chicken Republic’s more than 350 outlets, as part of its effort to make the payment approach more extensively embraced in Nigeria.

If you have actually taken a Lagos Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) bus, you have actually most likely utilized tap-to-pay innovation. The blue Cowry card, run by Touch and Pay Technologies (TAP) for Lagos’ transportation authority, works throughout the city’s roadway, rail, and ferryboat networks. TAP states it has more than 300,000 active users and has actually processed over 56 million deals throughout its operations. The factor the system works is that the card and innovation are purpose-built for spending for transport, and the contactless payment system is incorporated into the journey, as commuters are needed to tap to pay before boarding the bus.

It is a beginning point for comprehending the obstacle dealing with contactless payments in Nigeria. The innovation for tap-to-pay is not brand-new. A contactless payment needs a client with a contactless card or near-field interaction (NFC)-allowed gadget, a merchant with a suitable terminal, and payment facilities that links the deal to the consumer’s bank or payment service provider.

Information from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) reveals that POS terminals processed 1.38 billion deals worth 18.32 trillion ($13.5 billion) in 2024. Money has actually traditionally controlled how Nigerians pay, however it has actually been diminishing. In between 2014 and 2024, money deals in Nigeria fell by 59%. What changed money deals was electronic payments.

This suggests that Nigerians do not require to be persuaded that they can pay digitally, given that they currently do. What they are not yet encouraged of is why they need to pay by doing this.

We’ve been here before

CashAfrica’s collaboration with Chicken Republic is not the very first effort to make contactless payment a typical part of the payment procedure in Nigeria. In 2015, Unified Payments, a Nigerian payments facilities business, released PayAttitude with 6 banks, consisting of Access Bank, UBA, Zenith Bank, Skye Bank, Diamond Bank, and FirstBank. The NFC-based service enabled consumers to pay by tapping an NFC-enabled tag versus a suitable POS terminal. The tag might be connected to a phone or brought individually, and deals were connected to a pre-paid wallet.

In March 2025, Access Bank introduced Tap to Phone with Visa, permitting merchants to accept contactless card and gadget payments straight on NFC-enabled Android phones without a standard POS terminal.

Each effort fixed part of the supply issue, either by making suitable gadgets simpler to disperse or by making merchant approval points much easier to release. Still, none developed an engaging sufficient factor for customers and merchants to alter payment behaviour at scale.

There is likewise a trust issue. In a low-trust market like Nigeria, where customers watch out for payment scams, eliminating a familiar security action of PIN authentication can produce friction about whether tapping is safe. Nigeria’s contactless guidelines now put some borders around that danger. In 2023, the Central Bank of Nigeria provided standards covering the authentication and threat management requirements for contactless payments. The guidelines enable deals of approximately 15,000 ($11.28) without extra confirmation and a cumulative everyday limitation of 50,000 ($37.60).

The tap-to-pay technique is likewise taking on transfers, which have actually ended up being a familiar payment approach in parts of the nation.

By February 2023, due to the naira redesign policy and the resulting money scarcity, currency in flow fell from 3.29 trillion ($2.47 billion) in October 2022 to 982.09 billion ($738 million). As Nigerians had a hard time to gain access to physical money, electronic payments rose to an all-time high of 600 trillion ($451 billion) in 2023a 55% boost from the previous year.

The money scarcity required Nigerians to discover another method to pay. Scenarios made the alternative needed, and duplicated usage made it familiar, and tap-to-pay has no comparable forcing function. Other payment alternatives are still offered, so being much faster alone is insufficient. The innovation needs to provide a benefit that moves, cards and money do not, and make the distinction so apparent that customers and merchants have a factor to change.

What tap-to-pay opens

Tap-to-pay can pick up speed within the currently existing POS network. NIBSS counted 8.3 million signed up PoS terminals since March 2025, a few of which currently support NFC. NIBSS is likewise accountable for accrediting payment terminals and applications released in Nigeria, which develops a typical facilities layer throughout the market. The POS representative who presently deals with transfers, procedures card deals, or gives money might enter into the tap-to-pay circulation network. The catch is that a terminal can accept tap-to-pay and still have consumers who would rather make transfers.

Tap-to-pay fits into Nigeria’s cashless policy program. When the CBN presented the policy, it argued that the nation’s heavy dependence on money was pricey to handle, increased the threat of burglary and cash-related losses, kept cash outside the official monetary system, and restricted the efficiency of financial policy.

If tap-to-pay can make electronic payments simpler at the point of purchase, it might assist move more deals from money to the official digital economy, decreasing cash-handling expenses and earnings leak.

The payment approach might likewise normalise advanced types of authentication throughout payments, consisting of biometric authentication. Nigerian business have actually currently try out this. Gain access to Bank revealed a facial biometric payment system in 2020, while Accelerex, a Nigerian fintech, released Pay with Fingerprint on NIBSS-certified biometric POS gadgets in 2024. Like earlier contactless efforts, these systems have actually had couple of locations where customers might utilize them. If tap-to-pay can make contactless authentication part of daily deals, it might assist construct customer rely on the payment approach.

Real scale needs moving beyond surface-level combinations to robust execution. We’ve filtered the sound out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections in between start-up creators, international monetary operators, business leaders and people rewiring Africa’s technical structures. Get 20% off Early Bird tickets for a restricted time.