On October 13, CashAfrica introduced a partnership with Food Concepts, a quick-service restaurant firm, to introduce cell tap-to-pay throughout Chicken Republic’s greater than 350 shops, as half of its effort to make the cost methodology extra extensively adopted in Nigeria.
If you may have taken a Lagos Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) bus, you may have most likely used tap-to-pay know-how. The blue Cowry card, operated by Touch and Pay Technologies (TAP) for Lagos’ transport authority, works throughout the town’s street, rail, and ferry networks. TAP says it has greater than 300,000 energetic customers and has processed over 56 million transactions throughout its operations. The purpose the system works is that the cardboard and know-how are purpose-built for paying for transportation, and the contactless cost system is built-in into the journey, as commuters are required to faucet to pay earlier than boarding the bus.
It is a place to begin for understanding the problem going through contactless payments in Nigeria. The know-how for tap-to-pay will not be new. A contactless cost requires a buyer with a contactless card or near-field communication (NFC)-enabled machine, a service provider with a suitable terminal, and cost infrastructure that connects the transaction to the shopper’s financial institution or cost supplier.
Data from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) exhibits that POS terminals processed 1.38 billion transactions value ₦18.32 trillion ($13.5 billion) in 2024. Cash has traditionally dominated how Nigerians pay, but it surely has been shrinking. Between 2014 and 2024, money transactions in Nigeria fell by 59%. What changed money transactions was digital payments.
This signifies that Nigerians don’t must be satisfied that they will pay digitally, since they already do. What they aren’t but satisfied of is why they need to pay this fashion.
We’ve been right here earlier than
CashAfrica’s partnership with Chicken Republic will not be the primary try to make contactless cost a traditional half of the cost course of in Nigeria. In 2015, Unified Payments, a Nigerian payments infrastructure firm, launched PayPerspective with six banks, together with Access Bank, UBA, Zenith Bank, Skye Bank, Diamond Bank, and FirstBank. The NFC-based service allowed prospects to pay by tapping an NFC-enabled tag in opposition to a suitable POS terminal. The tag might be connected to a cellphone or carried individually, and transactions have been linked to a pay as you go pockets.
In March 2025, Access Bank launched Tap to Phone with Visa, permitting retailers to just accept contactless card and machine payments immediately on NFC-enabled Android telephones with no conventional POS terminal.
Each try solved half of the provision drawback, both by making suitable units simpler to distribute or by making service provider acceptance factors simpler to deploy. Still, none created a compelling sufficient purpose for shoppers and retailers to vary cost behaviour at scale.
There can also be a belief drawback. In a low-trust market like Nigeria, the place shoppers are cautious of cost fraud, eradicating a well-recognized safety step of PIN authentication can create friction about whether or not tapping is secure. Nigeria’s contactless guidelines now put some boundaries round that threat. In 2023, the Central Bank of Nigeria issued pointers protecting the authentication and threat administration necessities for contactless payments. The guidelines enable transactions of as much as ₦15,000 ($11.28) with out extra verification and a cumulative every day restrict of ₦50,000 ($37.60).
The tap-to-pay methodology can also be competing with transfers, which have change into a well-recognized cost methodology in components of the nation.
By February 2023, because of the naira redesign coverage and the ensuing money scarcity, foreign money in circulation fell from ₦3.29 trillion ($2.47 billion) in October 2022 to ₦982.09 billion ($738 million). As Nigerians struggled to entry bodily money, digital payments surged to an all-time excessive of ₦600 trillion ($451 billion) in 2023, a 55% improve from the earlier yr.
The money scarcity compelled Nigerians to search out one other approach to pay. Circumstances made the choice needed, and repeated use made it acquainted, and tap-to-pay has no equal forcing perform. Other cost choices are nonetheless out there, so being sooner alone will not be sufficient. The know-how has to supply a bonus that transfers, playing cards and money don’t, and make the distinction so apparent that customers and retailers have a purpose to modify.
What tap-to-pay unlocks
Tap-to-pay can acquire floor inside the already current POS community. NIBSS counted 8.3 million registered PoS terminals as of March 2025, some of which already assist NFC. NIBSS can also be liable for certifying cost terminals and purposes deployed in Nigeria, which creates a typical infrastructure layer throughout the trade. The POS agent who at present handles transfers, processes card transactions, or dispenses money may change into half of the tap-to-pay distribution community. The catch is {that a} terminal can settle for tap-to-pay and nonetheless have prospects who would moderately make transfers.
Tap-to-pay matches into Nigeria’s cashless coverage agenda. When the CBN launched the coverage, it argued that the nation’s heavy reliance on money was pricey to handle, elevated the danger of theft and cash-related losses, stored cash exterior the formal monetary system, and restricted the effectiveness of financial coverage.
If tap-to-pay could make digital payments simpler on the level of buy, it may assist shift extra transactions from money to the formal digital economic system, decreasing cash-handling prices and income leakage.
The cost methodology may additionally normalise extra superior varieties of authentication throughout payments, together with biometric authentication. Nigerian firms have already experimented with this. Access Bank introduced a facial biometric cost system in 2020, whereas Accelerex, a Nigerian fintech, launched Pay with Fingerprint on NIBSS-certified biometric POS units in 2024. However, like earlier contactless makes an attempt, these methods have had few locations the place shoppers may use them. If tap-to-pay could make contactless authentication half of on a regular basis transactions, it may assist construct client belief in the cost methodology.
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