Nigeria’s digital payments sector is expanding rapidly, but this growth is not without consequences. According to the FITC, financial fraud losses soared to ₦53.4 billion in the first nine months of 2024, a staggering 468% increase from ₦9.4 billion in the same period of 2023. Contributing factors include identity theft, chargeback fraud, and large-scale breaches at some major players.

This spike underscores a critical tension: How can Nigeria maintain momentum in payments innovation without compromising safety and trust?

Regulation as a Growth Enabler, Not a Constraint

Contrary to the perception that regulation stifles innovation, the Nigeria Payments Report 2025 highlights how recent policies have enabled progress. For instance:

• New KYC rules introduced by the CBN in 2024 now mandate BVN/NIN for account openings, helping to curb fraud but also increasing onboarding friction for neobanks.
• The Open Banking Framework has unlocked secure data sharing, allowing fintechs to personalize services and improve credit access.
• Regulatory sandboxes, updated PSV2025 licensing pathways, and evolving definitions for digital assets are creating safer entry points for innovation.

Zone’s own journey reflects this balance. Before obtaining a switching license, Zone partnered with a licensed provider to ensure compliance. Today, Zone’s blockchain-powered infrastructure embeds compliance directly into the transaction layer, offering a scalable model for smart oversight.

Understanding the Trust Gap and How to Close It

Trust has become the new currency of competition. With more players, differentiation hinges not just on who moves money fastest, but also on who does so most reliably. But what does “scaling trust” mean in practice?

• End-to-End Transparency: Zone’s blockchain ledger offers immutable transaction records, minimizing disputes and enabling faster resolution.
• Built-in Compliance: By embedding AML/KYC rules and proof-of-reserve mechanisms into the infrastructure, companies can scale without sacrificing security.
• Resilient Infrastructure: Zone’s PTSA aggregation eliminates intermediaries and allows direct POS-to-bank routing, improving reliability and regulatory traceability.

From Crisis to Opportunity: What the Fraud Spike Reveals

The dramatic rise in fraud is not just a red flag, it’s a signal that consumer expectations have outpaced the infrastructure’s ability to deliver securely. As payment volumes explode, so too do the opportunities for exploitation. Yet this also creates the mandate for players to double down on identity verification, transaction monitoring, and data protection.

Zone believes that compliance must be designed into the rails. This philosophy has helped secure partnerships with over 80% of Nigeria’s commercial banks, driving real-time, dispute-resistant transactions with lower failure rates.

Why Zone’s Approach Matters

Nigeria’s payments ecosystem is crowded, but fragmented. Many players rely on centralized systems vulnerable to outages or fraud. By contrast, Zone’s regulated blockchain network offers:

• Universal interoperability with existing systems
• Real-time reliability across POS, ATM, and mobile transactions
• Compliance by design, not as an afterthought

The Nigeria Payments Report 2025 makes it clear: the future of digital finance depends on who can scale trust as fast as they scale technology. Regulators, innovators, and infrastructure providers must co-create systems that are fast, inclusive, and secure. At Zone, we are not just building faster payment rails, we are building trust into the core of the ecosystem.

Download the Nigeria Payments Report 2025 to explore the full analysis.