The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has directed banks and other financial institutions to significantly shorten their response time to electronic fraud incidents to under 30 minutes, as part of renewed efforts to curb rising losses in the country’s digital payments ecosystem.
Deputy Governor, Financial System Stability, Mr. Philip Ikeazor, disclosed this at the 2026 Nigeria Electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF) Technical Kick-Off Session, where he also underscored the strategic importance of Nigeria’s ongoing migration to ISO 20022 in strengthening fraud detection and response capabilities.
Ikeazor said the industry had reached a critical consensus on faster intervention, noting that, “the industry has agreed to reduce fraud response times to under 30 minutes, a decisive step that materially improves recovery outcomes and limits systemic exposure.”
According to him, delays in responding to fraud incidents often worsen losses and weaken public confidence in electronic payment channels.
He explained that while Nigeria has made significant progress in securing its payments infrastructure, fraud risks have evolved with increasing digitisation. “While legacy fraud such as ATM card cloning has been effectively neutralised, newer risks, online fraud, social engineering, SIM-swap abuse, insider compromise, and authorised push payment scams, have emerged,” he said.
To address these challenges, the CBN is placing strong emphasis on the adoption of ISO 20022, describing it as a critical anti-fraud tool rather than a mere regulatory compliance exercise.
Ikeazor stated that the new messaging standard offers richer and more structured transaction data that will enhance traceability, analytics and early fraud detection across the financial system.
“Beyond compliance, ISO 20022 provides richer, structured transaction data that enhances traceability, analytics, and early fraud detection,” he said, adding that improved data quality would enable “faster investigation, better pattern recognition, and more effective cross-border cooperation.”
He noted that as banks, payment service providers and infrastructure operators complete implementation across real-time gross settlement (RTGS) and instant payment systems, transparency in transactions would improve materially, positioning Nigeria to confront increasingly sophisticated fraud schemes using modern, data-driven tools.
Ikeazor stressed that the renewed push was urgent, warning that electronic fraud losses have risen sharply in recent years. “Looking ahead to 2026, the challenge is clear; electronic fraud losses have risen sharply in recent years, and this trajectory must be decisively reversed,” he said.
According to him, tackling fraud effectively now requires enterprise-wide systems that are predictive, adaptive and integrated. “Effective fraud management is no longer about isolated controls or post-incident response; it is about deploying end-to-end systems that combine real-time transaction monitoring, enriched data analytics, behavioural profiling, identity intelligence, and immediate action processes across institutions,” he said.
He reaffirmed the CBN’s commitment to regulatory leadership and industry coordination, noting that unchecked fraud poses broader risks to financial stability. “Ultimately, fraud is not merely an operational issue, it is a financial stability concern,” Ikeazor warned.
The CBN, he said, will continue to work with stakeholders under the NeFF platform to ensure that faster response times and full exploitation of ISO 20022 data translate into measurable reductions in fraud losses by 2026.
