CBN fixes October 2025 deadline for banks to comply with payment messaging standard

…Orders migration to ISO 20022, geo-tagging compliance

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has issued a directive to all commercial banks, microfinance banks, mobile money operators, and other licensed participants in the Nigerian payments ecosystem, mandating full migration to the ISO 20022 standard for payment messaging by October 31, 2025.

In addition, all payment terminals must include mandatory geo-tagging to enhance data accuracy and transaction transparency across the financial system. The directive aligns with global SWIFT standards and supports Nigeria’s push for a more standardised and secure payment infrastructure.

According to the circular signed by Rakiya O. Yusuf, director of the Payments System Supervision Department, compliance validation exercises will commence from October 20, 2025. All payment transaction messages exchanged domestically or internationally must be formatted in ISO 20022 in line with CBN and SWIFT specifications.

Financial Institutions are required to ensure complete and accurate population of mandatory data fields, including payer and payee identifiers, merchant or agent identifiers, and relevant transaction metadata. All in-scope institutions must complete migration activities and be fully compliant not later than October 31, 2025.

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ISO 20022 is an international standard for financial messaging that provides a common language and structure for exchanging financial information. It is a multi-part standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee TC68, offering a unified methodology for capturing financial business processes and creating reusable message components. Its goal is to ensure global interoperability and seamless integration between financial institutions by establishing a single, harmonized approach for all financial messaging initiatives, according to iso20022.org.

Regarding geo-tagging, all existing and newly deployed payment terminals must have native geolocation services enabled, including double-frequency GPS receivers for accurate location detection. Terminals must be registered with a Payment Terminal Service Aggregator (PTSA), with precise latitude and longitude coordinates indicating the merchant or agent’s place of business. All terminals and related applications must be certified by the National Central Switch and integrate its geolocation SDK, including geofencing capabilities within the terminal’s point-of-sale application libraries. Only Android OS version 10 and above will be supported for terminal compatibility.

The geolocation SDK must be initialised at the registered business location, with a geofence radius of no more than 10 meters. Geo-location data must be captured at the point of transaction initiation and included in the message payload as a mandatory field. Terminals not directly routed to a PTSA will not be permitted to process transactions, and all terminals must strictly adhere to the approved Merchant Service Classification (MSC) codes for their sector.

All existing terminals must be geo-tagged within 60 days of the circular, while new terminals must be geo-tagged prior to certification and activation.

Hope Moses-Ashike

Hope Moses-Ashike is an Associate Editor, Banking and Finance, with more than a decade of experience reporting on Nigeria’s financial system and broader economy. She closely tracks market movements, monetary policy decisions, company disclosures, regulatory actions, economic indicators, and global developments, and interprets what they mean for businesses, investors, policymakers, and households. Her reporting helps readers understand complex issues such as inflation trends, foreign exchange market dynamics, interest rate decisions, bank performance, and investment risks. She also covers major international events and periodically travels to Washington, D.C., to report on the World Bank/IMF Spring and Annual Meetings. Her dedication to financial journalism has earned her multiple recognitions and invitations to high-level professional development programmes. She is an alumna of the International Visitors Leadership Programme (IVLP) in the United States and holds an Advanced Financial Journalism Certificate from the Press Association Training in London, UK. Her other notable achievements include completing the Lagos Business School CMC Programme, the Bloomberg Media Africa Initiative Programme, and a Master Class in Journalism at Rhodes University in South Africa.