The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has released the Payments System Vision (PSV) 2025 to be driven by contactless payments, big data, and open banking, among others.
Godwin Emefiele, governor of the CBN made this known in a Nigeria Payments System Vision 2025 document published on the CBN website.
This follows the implementation of the initiatives in the PSV 2020, which was published in 2006, to provide a roadmap for the reform of the Nigerian payments system with the main goal of driving the adoption of electronic payments in different sectors of the economy and improving the resilience of the financial system.
The strategy was revised in 2013 to address emerging issues and market realities related to risk management, compliance, governance and supervision.
“I congratulate all stakeholders in the Nigerian payments ecosystem for the landmark achievements recorded under PSV 2020 and acknowledge that the successes of the past decade would not have been possible without strong partnerships and collaboration by all ecosystem players – banks, payments service providers, regulatory authorities and other stakeholders in the public and private sectors,” Emefiele said.
These partnerships, he said aided the crafting of business rules and regulations which not only created a conducive environment for product development but also supported seamless settlement and resilience of payments infrastructure.
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According to him, the PSV 2025 will focus the attention of critical stakeholders on contemporary developments that will drive digital innovations and payment in the future, such as contactless payments, big data, open banking, and so on.
“I urge all stakeholders to join hands with the CBN to execute initiatives under the PSV 2025 towards fostering an efficient and secure payments system in Nigeria.
“As we implement the PSV 2025 agenda, the CBN will continue to ensure that the Nigerian payments system is widely utilised domestically, supports government’s financial inclusion objectives and meets international standards whilst contributing to overall national economic growth and development of Nigeria,” the CBN governor said.
In the PSV 2025, the CBN would initiate a review of the core payments infrastructure and central switching platform to ensure continued capability to meet payments demand.
The apex bank would also review the potential for a Request for Payment (RfP) Scheme and the deployment of Contactless Solutions such as Quick Response Code, Contactless Card, among others.
It was stated in the document that the PSV 2025 shall accelerate the availability of basic banking and financial services to the unbanked and ensure that other industry stakeholders are supportive of achieving the objective.
The CBN said it would keep an active watching brief on Blockchain solution for the Naira while collaborating with relevant stakeholders to identify resources to track and report on potential deployments of Blockchain solution in other countries; engage with other central banks on potential joint venture to investigate and implement a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) solution.
According to the document, the CBN would consider the development of a regulatory framework for potential 6 implementations of ‘Stable Coin. It would also continue its watching brief on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) as well as work with Security Exchange Commission (SEC) to jointly develop a regulatory framework in the event of adoption of an ICO-based investment solution.
Furthermore, the CBN would initiate a workstream to identify key use cases for ‘Big Data’ that have potential access to data in the payments system as well as support economic analysis.
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