The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has issued a fresh directive mandating all companies in the country’s payment ecosystem to migrate to the ISO 20022 messaging standard and implement mandatory geo-tagging of payment terminals latest by October 31 this year.
In a circular signed by the apex bank’s Director of the Payments System Supervision Department, Dr Rakiya Yusuf, dated August 25, 2025 and published on its official website on Tuesday, the CBN reminded Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), Microfinance Banks (MfBs), Mobile Money Operators (MMOs), Switching and Processing Companies, Payment Terminal Service Providers (PTSPs), Payment Solution Service Providers (PSSPs), Super Agents, and other licensed operators that ISO 20022 had become the global benchmark for payments messaging.
According to the circular, the latest regulatory order by the apex bank aligns with SWIFT’s global migration timeline and is intended to standardise quality data across Nigeria’s financial system.
It stressed: “All payment transaction messages exchanged domestically or internationally must be formatted in ISO 20022 in line with CBN and SWIFT specifications.”
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Based on the order, the affected institutions were also required to ensure accurate population of mandatory data elements, including payer and payee identifiers, merchant and agent identifiers, and transaction metadata.
The CBN stressed that compliance with these requirements remained not optional, warning that all in-scope institutions must complete migration activities and achieve full compliance before the October 31 deadline.
Apart from the messaging standards, the circular also introduced mandatory geo-tagging of payment terminals to enhance oversight and curb fraud in the electronic payments space.
The geo-tagging directive required all existing and newly deployed payment terminals to have native geo-location services enabled, supported by double-frequency GPS receivers while terminals must also be registered with a Payment Terminal Service Aggregator (PTSA) with precise latitude and longitude coordinates tied to merchant business locations.
Similarly, the CBN maintained that Android OS version 10 was now the minimum software requirement for all terminals to ensure compatibility with the National Central Switch’s geolocation monitoring system.
It further clarified that Terminals not directly routed through a PTSA would not be permitted to transact, while geo-location data is to be captured at the point of transaction and included in the message payload as a mandatory reporting field.
Specifically, it directed that “all existing terminals must be geo-tagged within 60 days of this circular; new terminals going forward must be geo-tagged before certification and activation.”
This is even as disclosed that compliance validation exercises would commence from October 20, 2025, adding that payment system reforms are aimed at strengthening Nigeria’s payments infrastructure, enhancing transparency in transactions, and aligning the nation’s payment system with international best practices.
