The country processed more than \u20a61.2 quadrillion ($880.51 billion) worth of transactions in 2025, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)<\/a>, making it one of the world\u2019s busiest real-time payment markets.<\/p>\n But as digital payments become the default way millions of Nigerians move money, a different challenge is emerging. Success has exposed the system\u2019s weakest point: trust.<\/p>\n \u201cService reliability and dispute resolution are the primary drivers of confidence erosion, far outweighing concerns about fraud, data privacy, and artificial intelligence,\u201d the report stated.<\/p>\n After decades of expanding access to financial services, policymakers are now asking a different question: not whether Nigerians can make digital payments, but whether they trust the system enough to keep using it.<\/p>\n Since establishing the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc<\/a> in 1993, Nigeria has invested in payment rails, digital identity, fintech regulation and real-time settlement infrastructure. Those investments have helped create a financial ecosystem that processes billions of transactions each year.<\/p>\n Formal financial inclusion has risen alongside that infrastructure. According to Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access (EFInA)\u2019s 2023 Access to Financial Services Survey, 64% of Nigerian adults<\/a> now use formal financial services, reflecting years of expansion by banks, fintech companies and mobile payment providers.<\/p>\n Aishah Ahmad, founder of Bridgforte and former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), told TechCabal that infrastructure alone cannot produce confidence.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of our essential ideas is that trust in financial services is an architectural outcome of the system,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have to create governance frameworks that produce and sustain trust consistently because of how interconnected the financial system has become.\u201d<\/p>\n As transaction volumes increase and more consumers depend on digital finance for everyday activities, failures become more visible and more costly.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fundamentals of banking are about trust,\u201d said Uzoma Dozie, chief executive officer of Sparkle, a Nigerian fintech, during a panel discussion at the report\u2019s launch on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Consumers relate with one financial system<\/p>\n One of the report\u2019s central arguments is that trust failures are operational before they become technological.<\/p>\n A single digital payment can pass through identity verification services, payment switches, banks, fintech applications, payment gateways, merchants and application programming interfaces (APIs) before reaching its destination. To consumers, it is only a single transaction.<\/p>\n \u201cCustomers experience the financial system not as an institution, but as a collective,\u201d Ahmad said. \u201cIf they engage with one institution and are unhappy, it erodes their confidence in the entire system.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether a failed payment originated from a bank, payment switch, fintech platform or network provider matters little to the consumer. What remains is the memory of a failed transfer, delayed reversal or unresolved complaint.<\/p>\n The report argues that this explains why operational failures increasingly shape public confidence more than emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n CBN is making trust a policy objective<\/p>\n The regulator has reached a similar conclusion. The CBN anchored its payment vision for 2028<\/a> on six guiding principles, including trust. The regulator argues that Nigeria\u2019s challenge is no longer just expanding digital access but also strengthening consumer confidence in the systems people already use.<\/p>\n An Innovations for Poverty Action<\/a> (IPA) survey published in 2024 found that 84% of consumers experienced at least one challenge while using digital financial services. Poor network quality affected 44% of respondents, while unexpected charges and fraud each affected 23%.<\/p>\n \u201cIn all, Nigeria\u2019s PSV 2025 expanded digital access but exposed weaknesses in redress, literacy, and high fraud losses, showing that inclusion without trust is fragile,\u201d the PSV read<\/a>.<\/p>\n To address that challenge, the regulator has set an ambitious target of achieving an 80% trust index score by 2028. It also plans to introduce quarterly public scorecards alongside a National Payments Trust Index to measure confidence in the financial system.<\/p>\n Trust has become an economic issue<\/p>\n Ahmad notes that if trust is not fixed, everyone in the financial ecosystem pays for it.<\/p>\n \u201cAccess has advanced,\u201d she said. \u201cBut as you succeed, you start to see patterns in your success. People are engaging with the system, but they are not doing that consistently, and usage could be better.\u201d<\/p>\n Diane Karusisi, chief executive officer of Bank of Kigali, Rwanda\u2019s largest commercial bank, argued that trust is ultimately built during moments of failure rather than success.<\/p>\n \u201cAccess to finance is not an end in itself. What we want is outcomes. We want people to grow, to start building wealth,\u201d she said during the panel discussion. \u201cTrust is earned when there is a failure, and you are able to walk through the failure with your customers.\u201d<\/p>\n Trust determines whether digital finance becomes habitual. Consumers who expect failed transfers or lengthy dispute resolution are more likely to keep cash, avoid unfamiliar financial products or revert to physical channels. Over time, that weakens transaction volumes, slows financial inclusion and reduces the return on years of investment in digital infrastructure.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it goes wrong, we see a lot of wasted investments,\u201d Ahmad said. \u201cWho pays for a lack of confidence? Today, we all do. In some of the challenges we see about cash usage and the lack of confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n To fix some of the trust issues existing in the financial space, she argues that collaboration must now extend beyond building shared infrastructure to include fraud intelligence, cybersecurity, operational resilience and dispute resolution, areas where failures at one institution increasingly affect confidence across the entire ecosystem.<\/p>\n \u201cThe coordination that got us here has to evolve with the interconnected system we see today,\u201d Ahmad said.<\/p>\n Bridgforte also recommended creating a longitudinal trust barometer that tracks what strengthens and weakens consumer confidence over time. \u201cWe have recommended that we do a longitudinal barometer to check over time what enhances trust and what erodes trust with consumers,\u201d Ahmad said.<\/p>\n For her, the larger question is whether governance can evolve as quickly as innovation has.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we improve that coordination in an intentional way, across infrastructure, institutions, technology and cultural confidence, we can build a framework that seeks to enhance all of this, \u201d she said.<\/p>\n While the report is grounded in Nigeria, Ahmad argues that its conclusions extend to the continent and beyond.<\/p>\n \u201cPlatform-led financial services, interconnected financial services, where a lot of financial products are delivered through digital payments through multiple actors, is something you see all over the world,\u201d Ahmad said.<\/p>\n True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. 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