Nigeria Digital Payment Fraud Losses Fall to ₦25.85B

In Short

• Nigeria digital payment fraud losses dropped to ₦25.85 billion in 2025, down from ₦52.26 billion in 2024.
• A new Adhere report says attacks are getting more targeted, more complex, and more expensive per incident.
• Regulators are increasing pressure on banks and fintechs, with tighter cybersecurity and anti-money laundering rules.

What Happened

Nigeria digital payment fraud losses fell by more than 50% to ₦25.85 billion in 2025, according to a new report released at the Adhere Compliance Frontline Forum 2026 in Lagos.

The report argues the headline drop in reported losses does not mean risk is falling. It says fraud losses are up about 350% since 2020, even as the number of reported cases fell by around 31%. That points to fewer incidents, but bigger losses when fraud succeeds.

Adhere’s report focuses on AI-enhanced fraud, meaning scams and attacks that use artificial intelligence to scale targeting, automate social engineering (tricking staff or customers), and evade detection. It estimates global fraud losses hit $442 billion in 2025, and that AI-enabled fraud is about 4.5 times more profitable than older methods.

The report also flags gaps in Nigeria’s defence capacity. It says Nigeria processes over 10 billion real-time transactions annually, but ranks 110th out of 112 countries for fraud protection. It also cites a cybersecurity workforce gap of about 90%, meaning there are far fewer skilled defenders than needed.

On regulation, the report says the Central Bank of Nigeria issued 17 regulatory actions within 14 months across cybersecurity, anti-money laundering (controls that stop dirty money), and data protection. It also highlights a ₦15.42 billion regulatory fine on a leading commercial bank in 2025 as a signal that non-compliance can threaten profits and correspondent banking relationships, which are the foreign bank links needed for international payments.

Why It Matters

For Nigerian fintechs and banks, lower reported fraud losses can hide a shift to higher-impact attacks. The report’s warning is that success will depend less on buying AI tools and more on building strong detection systems, clear model governance (rules for how AI is used), and collaboration across institutions.

For users and merchants, the trend usually shows up as more account takeovers, smarter impersonation attempts, and more friction like step-up verification. For operators, it raises the cost of compliance and security spend, especially as deadlines run through March 2028.