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Nigeria's principal corridors are diaspora inbound remittances (≈US$20.9bn in 2024) governed by the Revised IMTS Guidelines (31 January 2024), and intra-African trade via the Pan-African Payment & Settlement System (PAPSS) under AfCFTA. The 2024 IMTO regime confines IMTOs to inbound-only transfers, payout in Naira via cash/bank accounts, sets a US$1m minimum capital, bars banks and fintechs from holding IMTO licences (banks may act as agents), and removed the -2.5%/+2.5% allowable-rate cap so payouts use prevailing market rates. The CBN has eased PAPSS documentation (April 2025), allowed commercial banks to source FX for PAPSS via the official market, and launched the Non-Resident BVN (NRBVN) platform (May 2025) to deepen diaspora flows. Domestically NIBSS Instant Payments (NIP) is the dominant real-time rail.
The intra-African corridor is also being eased. A 28 April 2025 CBN circular simplified PAPSS transaction documentation for intra-African trade under AfCFTA and permitted commercial banks to source FX for PAPSS via the official market, while the CBN with NIBSS launched the Non-Resident BVN (NRBVN) platform on 13 May 2025 to deepen diaspora flows. Together these lower friction on intra-African and diaspora corridors and advance AfCFTA settlement integration.
Outlook
Both the diaspora-inbound and PAPSS intra-African corridors are escalating. The rate-cap removal and NRBVN onboarding rail are the principal near-term enablers; the Vision 2028 cross-border settlement repositioning (W9) is the longer-horizon corridor vector.
Payment Corridor Dynamics
Nigeria's cross-border payment-corridor dynamics registered a structural shift this cycle with the launch of Africa's first wallet-based outbound cross-border payment pilot. On 3 February 2026, Onafriq and the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System launched an instant naira-to-cedi corridor between Nigeria and Ghana, approved by the Central Bank of Nigeria as a six-month pilot operating without US-dollar or euro intermediation. The pilot explicitly targets reducing cross-border transfer costs from the historical seven-to-twelve-percent range toward the G20's three-percent target by 2027, and is described as formalising previously informal intra-African trade-settlement flows for Nigerian small and medium enterprises.
The corridor's structural significance lies in its settlement mechanism rather than its initial six-month scope: PAPSS, which as of 2026 covers eighteen to nineteen African countries including Nigeria, settles intra-African payments in local currency via central-bank netting, removing the correspondent-banking and dollar-intermediation dependency that has historically driven the elevated cost of Nigeria-Ghana and comparable West African corridors. If the pilot is judged successful at its review point, the same wallet-based, PAPSS-settled model is a plausible template for further Nigerian corridors beyond the Ghana pairing, though no evidence this cycle described specific plans to extend the model to additional corridors.
Outlook
The pilot's six-month mark falls around August 2026, at which point a scale-or-terminate decision is expected; the outcome of that review, and whether the reported cost-reduction trajectory toward the G20 three-percent target is evidenced in practice rather than stated as an aspiration, are the two developments most likely to determine whether this corridor becomes a template for further PAPSS-settled Nigerian trade corridors.
Sources and findings (4)
- T3https://www.aluko-oyebode.com/insights/cbn-issues-new-guidelines-on-international-money-transfer-services/retrieved
- T3https://pavestoneslegal.com/revised-cbn-guidelines-on-international-money-transfer-services-in-nigeria/retrieved
- T1https://www.cbn.gov.ng/AboutCBN/Reforms.htmlretrieved
- T3https://www.globallegalinsights.com/practice-areas/fintech-laws-and-regulations/nigeria/retrieved