title: Nigeria — Merchant Acquiring & Risk | World Payments Monitor canonical: https://payments.gi/jurisdictions/nigeria/w8/ publisher: Asymmetric Intelligence ### W8 Merchant Acquiring & Risk Probable confirmed 2026-06-23 Acquiring is restricted to CBN-licensed institutions and is card-neutral; PTSPs deploy/maintain POS terminals while NIBSS and (since April 2024) Unified Payments act as Payment Terminal Service Aggregators routing and settling POS transactions. Merchants must pass due diligence before POS allocation, may not surcharge or discriminate by scheme, and disputed card/POS transactions must be resolved within five working days (cardholder complaints within 48 hours). NIBSS credits interchange shares to parties and POS devices now require GPS tracking for recertification. The market is highly POS/agent-led, dominated by Moniepoint, OPay and PalmPay agent networks. Standing sub-brief · as of 26 June 2026 169 words · last cycle 2026-10-18 #### Merchant Acquiring & Risk Nigerian merchant acquiring is restricted to CBN-licensed, card-neutral institutions. PTSPs deploy and maintain POS terminals while NIBSS and — since April 2024 — Unified Payments act as PTSAs routing and settling POS transactions. Merchants must pass due diligence before terminal allocation, may not surcharge or discriminate by scheme, and disputed card and POS transactions must be resolved within five working days. POS devices now require NIBSS certification plus GPS tracking for recertification. The market is POS and agent-led, dominated by the Moniepoint, OPay and PalmPay agent networks. For firm types, the market spans both bank-PSP acquirers (who must hold the CBN acquiring licence) and the non-bank agent networks that dominate physical acceptance. The PCI-DSS, NIBSS-certification, GPS-recertification and SLA burdens are real entry barriers for early-stage acquirers — an under-indexed operational dimension. This module cross-references the W4 scheme rules. #### Outlook Acquiring structure is stable. The GPS-recertification control is a notable operational tightening, and specialist coverage of merchant-acquiring operations remains under-indexed relative to regulatory and legal-firm sourcing. Periodic update · new data 2026-09-28 #### Merchant Acquiring & Risk Merchant-acquiring concentration in Nigeria is now directly constrained by the same 15 June 2026 CBN circular that caps card-issuing concentration: an institution controlling more than 25 per cent of the card-issuing market cannot hold more than 15 per cent of merchant-acquiring market share. This structural cap targets the same firms that dominate consumer issuing, on the premise that allowing a single institution or group to dominate both sides of the transaction chain concentrates risk and reduces competitive pressure on acquiring fees and merchant terms. Affected institutions must submit monthly market-share reports to the CBN to demonstrate compliance ahead of the 31 December 2026 deadline, giving the regulator an ongoing monitoring mechanism rather than a one-time compliance check. This reporting obligation is itself a meaningful addition to the merchant-acquiring risk-management landscape, since it creates a documented, recurring dataset the CBN can use to track concentration trends over time rather than relying on episodic market surveys. The concentration-cap intervention sits within the broader context of Nigeria's rapidly scaling payments volume, with the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System's Instant Payment platform processing close to 11 billion transactions in 2024. That scale is precisely the environment in which merchant-acquiring concentration risk, if left unaddressed, could compound quickly, which is the analytical rationale connecting the volume growth to the timing of this intervention. #### Outlook The monthly market-share reporting requirement will be the most useful near-term indicator of how concentrated Nigeria's merchant-acquiring market actually is heading into the 31 December 2026 deadline. Whether dominant card-issuers restructure their acquiring operations to comply, divest acquiring business lines, or seek exemptions will determine how disruptive this cap proves to be in practice. **1 earlier distinct update(s)** Periodic update · new data 2026-08-25 #### Merchant Acquiring & Risk The Central Bank of Nigeria's market-concentration circular bears directly on merchant-acquiring market structure. Under the 15 June 2026 circular, any institution whose consumer-issuing market share exceeds twenty-five percent is limited to no more than fifteen percent merchant-acquiring share, with divestiture or restructuring required by 31 December 2026. For merchant acquirers specifically, this fifteen-percent ceiling is the operative constraint: an acquirer that has grown its merchant-acquiring book to a scale that would previously have been unremarkable may now be required to divest acquiring volume, transfer merchant relationships, or restructure corporate ownership if its affiliated consumer-issuing business exceeds the twenty-five-percent threshold. This is a market-structure risk rather than a fraud or credit risk in the conventional merchant-acquiring sense, but it is the most consequential acquiring-side development identified this cycle: it directly targets the vertically-integrated bank and non-bank groups that have historically combined issuing and acquiring functions within Nigeria's payments market, and it does so through a hard divestiture deadline rather than a supervisory expectation. #### Outlook Which specific acquirers are affected by the fifteen-percent merchant-acquiring ceiling, and what divestiture or restructuring mechanisms they pursue ahead of the 31 December 2026 deadline, are the key developments to watch; no acquirer-specific divestiture or restructuring action had been evidenced as of this cycle's research. **Sources and findings (4)** 1. T3 [https://srjlegal.com/pos-card-acceptance-services-in-nigeria/](https://srjlegal.com/pos-card-acceptance-services-in-nigeria/) retrieved 2026-06-23 2. T1 [https://www.cbn.gov.ng/cashless/POS_GUIDELINES_August2011_FINAL_FINAL%20(2).pdf](https://www.cbn.gov.ng/cashless/POS_GUIDELINES_August2011_FINAL_FINAL%20(2).pdf) retrieved 2026-06-23 3. T3 [https://financeinafrica.com/insights/inside-nigerias-card-rails-build/](https://financeinafrica.com/insights/inside-nigerias-card-rails-build/) retrieved 2026-06-23 4. T2 [https://nibss-plc.com.ng/](https://nibss-plc.com.ng/) retrieved 2026-06-23