The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has directed all commercial banks, microfinance banks, mobile money operators, and payment service providers to geo-tag all payment terminals within 60 days and fully adopt the ISO 20022 payment messaging standard by October 31, 2025.
In a circular signed by Rakiya Yusuf, director of the payments system supervision department, the apex bank warned that non-compliance would disrupt transaction processing.
“All payment transaction messages exchanged domestically or internationally must be formatted in ISO 20022 in line with CBN and SWIFT specifications,” the statement reads. “Compliance validation exercises commence October 20.”
Under the directive, all Point-of-Sale (PoS) terminals must enable native geolocation services with double-frequency GPS receivers, be registered with a Payment Terminal Service Aggregator (PTSA) with accurate latitude/longitude coordinates of merchant locations,
integrate the National Central Switch SDK for geolocation monitoring and geofencing,operate on Android OS v10 or higher for compatibility.
“A radius of 10 meters outside a registered location is the maximum permitted geofence for merchant activity,” the CBN stated.
The apex bank said geo-tagging will curb fraud, enhance data integrity, and improve payment transparency across Nigeria’s financial ecosystem.
