CBN directs banks and fintechs to store Nigeria-generated payment transaction data on local servers by Jan 1, 2027, and disclose beneficial owners.
The CBN has issued a new circular telling payment system participants to localise payment data. That means any payment transaction data created inside Nigeria must be stored and managed within Nigeria.
Payment transaction data is the record of a payment, like who paid, who received, timestamps, amounts, device or channel, and reference IDs. Many providers currently use foreign cloud infrastructure, which is data storage and computing hosted outside the country.
The CBN said the directive is part of a wider push to strengthen oversight, improve transparency, and reduce concentration risk. Concentration risk is when too much of a critical service depends on a small number of players or a single external dependency, like one cloud region or one outsourced processor.
Alongside data localisation, the CBN introduced new ownership rules. It directed financial institutions with digital payment operations to disclose Ultimate Beneficial Ownership (UBO), meaning the real people who ultimately own or control significant shareholdings, even if the shares are held through other companies.
For banks and fintechs, the CBN payment data requirement could trigger major infrastructure changes. Some companies may need to migrate databases, logging systems, and analytics pipelines to Nigerian data centres, or adopt local cloud providers, while keeping security and uptime stable.
The policy may also change vendor choices for payment gateways and processors, including companies that plug into platforms like Flutterwave and Paystack for collections and API-based payments.
For regulators and law enforcement, local storage can make audits, investigations, and dispute resolution faster because critical records sit under Nigerian jurisdiction. But it also raises implementation questions, including how cross-border transactions are handled when a single payment touches multiple countries.
The 2027 deadline gives the ecosystem time to plan, but it also puts a clear clock on compliance, budgeting, and procurement for payment infrastructure in Nigeria.
Primary Source: Nairametrics
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