Nigeria: digital-asset regulation
9 entries.
June 2026
The CBN unveiled its Payments System Vision 2028 in Abuja on 1 June, the roadmap promised when the Payments Service Providers Committee launched in April (cpm-2026-0019). The headline target is 95% financial inclusion by 2028, but the regulatory story is stablecoins: the document references them dozens of times and proposes an enabling framework recognising fiat-collateralised stablecoins as a distinct category of digital monetary instrument, with CBN licensing, full high-quality reserve backing, daily attestations, monthly audits and real-time supervisory visibility. The eNaira is repositioned as payment infrastructure rather than a consumer product, and the vision contemplates regulated stablecoins in live cross-border corridors for trade and remittances. Five years after ordering banks away from crypto, Nigeria's central bank is designing stablecoins into its payments architecture. The framework's legal form is the thing to watch next.
May 2026
Effective 19 May 2026, Nigerian equities and commodities settle T+1. It is a market-plumbing change rather than a crypto rule, but it belongs on this monitor for what it signals: the same regulator writing VASP-adjacent rules is compressing settlement toward the T+0 world that tokenized markets assume. Brokers, custodians and clearing members had days rather than months to re-tool reconciliation, a preview of the operational tempo African market infrastructure reform is now running at.
SEC Nigeria published Rules on Commodity Exchanges, Warehouse Receipt Systems and Collateral Management under ISA 2025, setting licensing and operational standards for commodity market participants, including real-world asset tokenization. Paired with Ghana's Africoin sandbox admission a month earlier, this is the second African regulator in a quarter to give agricultural and natural-resource tokenization an explicit legal home. Licensing pathways were expected Q2 to Q3 2026; platforms building RWA products on Nigerian rails now have a rulebook to design against.
April 2026
A rules exposure draft set a minimum paid-up share capital of ₦7.5 billion for Free Trade Zone Entities seeking to list or offer shares on the Nigerian capital market, with a two-week comment window. FTZEs include technology, payments and blockchain infrastructure operators, so the capital floor quietly shapes which digital asset businesses can reach Nigerian public markets at all. The comment window closed in late April; the finalised rule is the thing to watch.
Flutterwave secured a national microfinance banking licence, following Paystack's January acquisition of Ladder Microfinance Bank and earlier upgrades for OPay and Moniepoint. The pattern is a policy: CBN is forcing fintechs that hold customer funds to choose between pure payment processing and full banking licensing. The ₦250m Paystack fine over Zap wallet operations showed the regulator comparing licensed activity against actual activity. Any platform whose custody practices have outgrown its licence category, in Nigeria or elsewhere in the region, should read this as its warning.
The CBN inaugurated a joint Payments Service Providers Committee bringing the central bank, commercial banks, mobile money operators and fintechs to one table, after Nigeria's payment system crossed the quadrillion-naira mark with 11.2 billion transactions in 2024. A new Payments System Vision was promised within a month of launch. For digital assets the interesting part is the grey zone the committee will inevitably touch: cross-border payments, stablecoin-adjacent services and BNPL currently sit between licensing categories, and a coordination body is where those lines get redrawn. Re-verified 6 July 2026: the promised vision arrived on 1 June as the Payments System Vision 2028, with stablecoins written into it (cpm-2026-0024).
March 2026
SEC Nigeria revoked Kensington Agro Trading Limited's registration as a capital market operator with immediate effect, invoking Section 61(6) of the Investments and Securities Act 2025. It is the first publicised revocation under the new statute's authority. Grounds were not disclosed; commodity exchanges and investors were told to cease dealings. The significance is procedural: fourteen months after enactment, the Commission is using ISA 2025's teeth and not just its licensing forms. Operators registered under the pre-2025 framework should treat their compliance posture as due for audit.
January 2026
SEC Nigeria issued a public warning declaring Aurum Bot, an online platform soliciting crypto investments, unregistered and unlicensed to operate in any capacity in Nigeria. It is one warning among many, and that is the point: under the Investments and Securities Act 2025 the Commission is running a steady surveillance-and-warning operation against unlicensed digital asset platforms, published through its circulars feed. Platforms soliciting Nigerian retail investors without ISA 2025 registration should assume they are visible.
On the same day as its Aurum Bot alert, SEC Nigeria warned against ModMount Services Limited, a CFD broker offering forex, stocks, commodities and crypto to Nigerian investors while presenting itself as a licensed international operator. The doctrine in the warning matters more than the name: claimed offshore licensing does not substitute for Nigerian registration under ISA 2025. Every multi-asset platform marketing to Nigerian retail from abroad is on notice.
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