The Central Bank of Nigeria issued a circular requiring all acquirers, processors and Payment Terminal Service Providers to establish and maintain active connectivity with both licensed Payments Terminal Service Aggregators, the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System and Unified Payment Services Limited, for Point-of-Sale (PoS) transaction routing. The directive builds on a 2024 circular aimed at addressing concerns linked to routing all PoS transactions through a single aggregator. PoS routing systems must be configured to enable seamless automatic failover between the two aggregators during downtime or service disruption. The two aggregators, working with regulated financial institutions, must also conduct periodic tests to validate redundancy, failover effectiveness and overall system resilience, and are required to notify banks in real time of any downtime while reporting to the Director of the Payments System Supervision Department within 24 hours with the nature, causes and remedial actions. Regulated financial institutions are required to comply within one month from the date of the circular.
Central Bank of Nigeria 2025-12-11
Central Bank of Nigeria mandates dual connectivity to NIBSS and UPSL for Point-of-Sale transaction routing
The Central Bank of Nigeria mandates acquirers, processors, and Payment Terminal Service Providers to maintain connectivity with licensed Payments Terminal Service Aggregators, the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System, and Unified Payment Services Limited for PoS transaction routing. PoS systems must support automatic failover between aggregators and undergo periodic resilience testing. Compliance is required within one month of the circular's issuance.