The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has given all financial institutions, acquirers and payment service providers a one-month deadline to implement mandatory dual connectivity for all Point of Sale (PoS) transactions.
The instruction is contained in a circular signed by the Director of the Payments System Supervision Department, Rakiya Yusuf, and dated December 11, 2025.
The regulator said the directive upgrades an earlier policy from September 2024 and is aimed at eliminating the persistent single-channel bottleneck that has caused frequent PoS downtime nationwide.
Under the new rule, all acquirers, processors and Payment Terminal Service Providers must maintain active links with both the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) and Unified Payment Services Limited (UPSL).
This dual link is expected to reduce dependence on any single aggregator and stabilise the payment infrastructure.
CBN moves to reduce PoS failures and enforce real-time reporting
To strengthen resilience, the CBN ordered that PoS routing systems must be configured to switch automatically between the two aggregators whenever a disruption occurs. This automatic failover is now a compulsory standard across the industry, designed to improve transaction completion rates during network outages.
The circular also mandates periodic redundancy and failover tests. NIBSS and UPSL are required to collaborate with regulated financial institutions to validate system readiness and ensure the architecture can support uninterrupted service. The apex bank said these tests will form part of its oversight of payment-system infrastructure.
On reporting obligations, the apex bank introduced stricter rules. NIBSS and UPSL must inform banks immediately when a downtime occurs and must provide a detailed incident report to the Payments System Supervision Department within 24 hours. The report must outline the cause of the disruption, the impact and the corrective measures taken.
With the one-month implementation window, banks and service providers must complete integration, testing and system adjustments before mid-January 2026. The CBN stated that all regulated financial institutions are expected to meet the deadline as part of ongoing efforts to improve the reliability of electronic payments.
What you should know
The latest directive aligns with the apex bank’s broader push to build a more resilient digital-payment ecosystem.
This new directive emerges following previous guidelines targeted at POS operators in the country. On August 25, 2025, the CBN issued a circular commanding all existing PoS terminals to be geo-tagged within 60 days, and new devices must be geo-tagged before activation.
That earlier document mandated the use of ISO 20022 messaging for payments and required devices to support geolocation and geofencing, limiting operational radius to ~10 metres from registered addresses. Terminals that failed the compliance checks scheduled from October 20, 2025, would be deactivated.
The CBN also tightened regulation on agent banking by mandating geo-tagging (or geo-fencing) of PoS terminals and introducing a minimum penalty of N5 million, with an additional N300,000 per day for ongoing non-compliance.
The regulator also extended the enforcement deadline for location and exclusivity rules until April 1, 2026, giving industry players more lead time to comply.
