CBN and NCC Give Nigerian Banks Real-Time Telecom Data

In Short

Nigeria’s Central Bank (CBN) and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) have signed an agreement that lets banks verify risky mobile numbers in real time.

The new tool is called the Telecom Identity Risk Management System (TIRMS), and it is meant to reduce fraud tied to SIM swaps and recycled phone numbers.

What Happened

The CBN and NCC signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Abuja to open up regulated telecom identity data to financial institutions.

Through TIRMS, banks can check whether a phone number connected to a transaction has been recently swapped (a SIM swap is when a criminal moves your number to a new SIM card), recycled (reassigned to a new user), flagged for suspicious activity, or has gone inactive.

Banks can run these checks before a payment clears, which is the moment money actually moves.

Until now, Nigerian banks had no reliable way to confirm the status of a mobile identity in real time. That gap has been widely exploited because phone numbers often sit at the centre of login, password resets, and one-time passwords (OTPs, which are short codes sent to prove it is you).

Why It Matters

Nigeria’s digital payments stack leans heavily on mobile numbers as an identity and authentication layer. When that layer is weak, fraudsters can hijack accounts even if the bank’s systems are strong.

NIBSS reported that digital payment fraud fell 51% to ₦25.85 billion in 2025. Even with that decline, SIM swap and compromised numbers remain common routes for account takeover and unauthorised transfers.

For fintechs and banks, TIRMS could add a new risk signal at checkout and during account changes. It could also reduce false positives if the rules are tuned well, since not every SIM swap is fraudulent.

Source Attribution

CBN and NCC. NIBSS.