Central Bank of Nigeria Mandates Dual PoS

The Nigeria — Central Bank of Nigeria has issued a directive mandating all financial institutions, acquirers, and payment service providers in Nigeria to implement dual connectivity for Point of Sale (PoS) transactions within one month. This policy, signed by Rakiya Yusuf, Director of the Payments System Supervision Department, builds on an earlier September 2024 policy and aims to eliminate frequent PoS downtime caused by reliance on a single transaction channel. Under the new rule, all relevant entities must maintain active links with both the Nigeria — Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System and Unified Payment Services Limited, configuring their systems for automatic failover. This measure is intended to reduce dependence on any single aggregator, strengthen the resilience of Nigeria's payments infrastructure, and ensure seamless transaction switching during outages. Both Nigeria — Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System and Unified Payment Services Limited are also required to conduct periodic redundancy and failover tests with financial institutions and submit detailed incident reports to the Nigeria — Central Bank of Nigeria within 24 hours of any downtime.