Topic: payments
6 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
Ten weeks after quietly surveying fintechs on crypto (cpm-2026-0011), the BCEAO convened an international conference in Dakar on 8 May on crypto-assets and digital innovations and their implications for monetary and financial stability. The agenda was regulatory, not promotional: stablecoin implications for monetary policy, prudential supervision and regional cooperation, cybersecurity and financial integrity. The Governor's stated objective was a proportionate regulatory framework coordinated at the regional level. Read the trajectory: the central bank of the eight-state UEMOA zone has moved from silence to intelligence-gathering to public convening inside six months, the standard runway a central bank builds before it regulates. Whatever framework emerges will bind Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo simultaneously. Source in French; translation ours.
April 2026
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).
February 2026
At the end of February 2026 the BCEAO circulated a questionnaire to fintech operators on possible uses of cryptocurrencies in the regional financial system, the first known crypto survey from the central bank of the eight-member UEMOA zone (Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo). The BCEAO has never issued a formal crypto directive and licenses no VASPs, so a pre-consultation instrument is a genuine posture change: from silence to intelligence-gathering. Whatever framework follows will apply simultaneously across all eight states. One regulatory event, eight markets. Reported in French by Jeune Afrique; the questionnaire itself has not been published. Translation ours. Re-verified 6 July 2026: the posture change accelerated. On 8 May the BCEAO convened an international conference on crypto-assets in Dakar (cpm-2026-0026).
December 2025
Ghana's Virtual Asset Service Providers Act (Act 1154) passed Parliament on 19 December 2025 and received presidential assent on 30 December, making it the third African standalone digital asset statute enacted in the October to December 2025 quarter, after Kenya and Nigeria. Africa's earlier standalone regimes include Mauritius (VAITOS Act 2021), Botswana (2022), Namibia (2023) and Seychelles (2024), so this is a claim about the pace of that quarter, not about being third on the continent. The model is co-regulatory: Bank of Ghana supervises the monetary and payments dimension, SEC Ghana the securities dimension. Licensing is mandatory for all VASPs, AML obligations attach, and crypto influencers reportedly fall within the licensing net. The target is an estimated $3 billion informal market involving roughly 17% of Ghanaian adults. BoG's supervisory rules were slated to roll out in phases through 2026.
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