The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has unveiled a reform agenda aimed at achieving 95 per cent financial inclusion by 2028, while targeting “faster-than-a-blink” digital transactions to bring millions more Nigerians into the formal financial system.
Speaking at the launch of the Payments System Vision 2028 (PSV 2028) on Monday, CBN Governor, Olayemi Cardoso, said the initiative was designed to deepen trust, expand access to financial services, and modernise Nigeria’s payment ecosystem.
“The goal is inclusion, not exclusion,” Cardoso said.
He stated that by 2028, cash should no longer dominate economic transactions, stressing that the apex bank intends to significantly reduce the volume of cash circulating outside the banking system.
“We need to do a lot more work to build trust and ensure people have no doubt they are dealing with a strong and reliable payment system. A payment system is only as strong as the trust people have in it,” he said.
Cardoso explained that PSV 2028 goes beyond policy design, describing it as a blueprint for how Nigerians will transact, trade, save, and participate in an increasingly digital economy.
He described payment infrastructure as the “invisible roads that move money,” noting that efficient payment systems are now central to economic growth, competitiveness, poverty reduction, and investor confidence.
According to him, the framework builds on Nigeria’s rapid payments transformation over the last two decades, driven by instant payments, fintech expansion, and digital adoption.
The CBN governor said the new vision would strengthen payment infrastructure, deepen financial inclusion, promote innovation, improve resilience, and enhance Nigeria’s integration into regional and global payment systems.
Cardoso warned against Nigeria’s long-standing “start-stop” policy culture, insisting that the success of PSV 2028 would depend on implementation rather than documentation.
“The success of this vision will not be measured by the document, but by execution,” he said.
He added that one of the key targets of the framework was to bring an additional 15 million Nigerians — including market women, farmers, and young people — into the formal financial system by 2028.
“In 2023, a large number of Nigerian adults had access to financial services. Under Vision 2028, I would like to see this reach 95 per cent inclusion,” Cardoso stated.
He stressed that financial inclusion was directly linked to poverty reduction and economic participation, adding that access to efficient payment systems determines whether citizens can fully participate in the economy.
Cardoso said Nigeria’s ambition was to ensure that by 2028, financial transactions would be completed “faster than a blink,” building on existing real-time systems that already process millions of transactions daily in under 10 seconds.
He noted that the next phase of reforms would address interoperability gaps, settlement delays, and other inefficiencies across financial platforms.
The apex bank governor also set a target of reducing fraud losses to below 0.001 per cent of total transactions by 2028 through stronger identity verification systems, including the integration of the National Identification Number (NIN) and Bank Verification Number (BVN), alongside artificial intelligence-driven fraud detection tools.
“People’s money must be safer in the digital system than under their mattresses,” he said.
Cardoso further disclosed that PSV 2028 was designed to position Nigeria as a global fintech hub, with the ambition of producing internationally competitive fintech unicorns.
According to him, open banking reforms have already unlocked more than 100 Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), creating opportunities for innovation, new products, and expanded financial services.
He said Nigerian innovators should be able to build globally competitive fintech solutions from cities such as Lagos, Abuja, and Kano using local infrastructure and data.
“We must transition from a fintech adoption market to a fintech production and export economy,” he said.
Cardoso also urged Nigerians to project the country’s fintech achievements globally, warning that failure to tell Nigeria’s story could allow external narratives to define the country’s progress.
“If we do not tell the story, others will tell it for us,” he said.
Other dignitaries at the event included the Chief Executive Officer of Sterling Bank Plc, Abubakar Suleiman; Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System, Premier Oiwoh; Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Emomotimi Agama; and Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Remita Payment Services Limited, Deremi Atanda, among others.
