Nigeria’s ₦3.4 quadrillion financial system runs on telecom networks, argues JOHN EMENIKE
In 2025, digital cost transactions in Nigeria reached ₦3.458 quadrillion, in step with the Central Financial institution of Nigeria’s Annual Record, greater than triple the ₦1.078 quadrillion recorded only a 12 months previous. Transaction quantity rose to 47.9 billion from 11.3 billion. Through the primary half of of 2026, Level-of-Sale terminals by myself had processed ₦ 41.74 trillion, a 62.5 according to cent build up over the similar length in 2025, throughout a community of 8.36 million registered POS units, of which 5.9 million had been actively deployed.
AfricaNenda’s 2025 State of Inclusive Immediate Cost Methods record rated Nigeria’s NIBSS Immediate Cost platform as the primary African fast cost device to succeed in “mature” standing on its Inclusivity Spectrum, with 57.7 million distinctive customers, representing 52 according to cent of the grownup inhabitants. The sensible query that adulthood raises is: what bodily infrastructure carries that quantity, and who constructed it?
The solution, for somebody who pauses to track the chain, is telecoms. Each and every POS terminal, each financial institution switch initiated by means of a cellular app, each USSD consultation dialled on a function telephone, and each service provider cost showed by means of a fintech platform calls for, in the future in its execution, a operating cellular community connection. The terminals hook up with their cost processors nearly completely by means of cellular SIMs.
When a rider-hailing motive force in Surulere accepts a virtual fare, when a pharmacist in Aba confirms a switch, when a fruit dealer at Damaturu assessments her POS steadiness on the finish of the day, every of the ones moments is determined by a sign travelling from a base station to a transfer and again once more.
Ebenezer Onyeagwu, former Crew Managing Director of Zenith Financial institution, captured the connection evidently when he seen that introducing USSD modified the whole thing for banking. “With out telecoms infrastructure,” he mentioned, “there’s no USSD code.” His commentary, made earlier than the present wave of app-based banking collected tempo, is more true now than when he made it. USSD’s proportion of overall cost price has declined to 0.14 according to cent as smartphone customers migrate to banking apps, and GTCO’s *737# platform noticed volumes fall from ₦987 billion within the first half of of 2024 to ₦499 billion a 12 months later.
However the migration from USSD to apps deepens the financial system’s dependence on telecoms infrastructure moderately than decreasing it. A USSD consultation makes use of the signalling layer of the cellular community, whilst a banking app makes use of the information layer, eating extra bandwidth, extra persistently, throughout extra hours of the day. The dependency has handiest thickened.
The infrastructure maintaining that dependency is the made from sustained capital deployment around the sector. In step with the Nigerian Communications Fee, cellular community operators invested greater than ₦2.13 trillion in capital expenditure on community infrastructure and upgrades in 2025, whilst tower corporations dedicated an extra ₦373.8 billion, bringing the field’s overall funding to roughly ₦2.5 trillion for the 12 months.
Inside of that overall, MTN Nigeria’s ₦1 trillion full-year spend, greater than double its ₦443.5 billion outlay in 2024, represented the only greatest operator dedication and financed a variety to 43,000 kilometres of fibre spine and a inhabitants protection footprint of 93.7 according to cent. Within the first half of of 2026 by myself, MTN deployed an additional ₦620.5 billion in capital expenditure, whilst the NCC showed that operators jointly dedicated to greater than 12,000 web site additions and upgrades around the 12 months, with just about 3,000 delivered by way of mid-year and over 730 new 5G websites deployed throughout 27 states.
Airtel Nigeria, Globacom, and the wider tower and fibre infrastructure corporations that serve all 4 operators have every contributed to a shared bodily layer that now underpins the day by day flows of Africa’s greatest virtual bills financial system.
What has modified up to now decade is the choice of establishments whose trade fashions relaxation on that shared layer. A decade in the past, the connection used to be bilateral: banks used cellular channels, and telcos equipped them. Nowadays, the ecosystem comprises cost carrier banks, cellular cash operators, service provider aggregators, and lending platforms, all of which direction their services and products thru the similar base stations and fibre strains that lift voice calls and WhatsApp messages.
Moniepoint, which reported processing ₦412 trillion throughout greater than 14 billion transactions in its 2025 evaluation, claims to energy 8 out of each ten in-person bills made around the nation. OPay, PalmPay, and Kuda serve thousands and thousands extra. None of them personal a unmarried base station or a metre of fibre. Their infrastructure is borrowed from telecoms operators whose funding choices decide whether or not it might endure the burden that Nigeria’s virtual financial system now puts on it.
The regulatory device has begun to recognise this interdependence. The Central Financial institution of Nigeria now calls for all POS transactions to connect with each approved Cost Terminal Provider Aggregators, NIBSS and UPSL, with automated failover between them, a mandate that exists exactly as a result of a unmarried level of failure within the connectivity chain can cascade into agreement disasters throughout 1000’s of terminals.
The joint CBN and NCC round of December 2024, which directed banks and telecoms corporations to get to the bottom of the ₦250 billion USSD debt dispute that had amassed since 2019, used to be itself an acknowledgement that the 2 sectors had change into so structurally intertwined {that a} industrial war of words between them posed a systemic chance to the nationwide bills device.
The fragility of the association surfaces periodically. When community disruptions happen and have an effect on operators at other instances, POS operators record failed settlements, traders revert to money the place they are able to to find it, and the virtual trade layer that Nigeria increasingly more is dependent upon contracts till the sign returns. The Central Financial institution’s personal information displays that forex outdoor banks stood at ₦4.922 trillion in June 2026, sufficient to maintain slightly two days of ordinary transaction quantity if the virtual rails went darkish. An financial system that has moved this a ways on-line has no offline mode.
The telecoms sector contributed ₦5.2 trillion and 9.72 according to cent of actual GDP in the second one quarter of 2026, up 10.38 according to cent 12 months on 12 months, when compared with 4.43 according to cent for the total financial system. However those figures seize handiest the field’s direct output.
They don’t seize the ₦41.74 trillion in first-half POS volumes, ride-hailing platforms, e-commerce deliveries, telemedicine consultations, and agricultural price-discovery gear that use the similar infrastructure. The NCC designated telecoms towers, base stations, fibre-optic cables, information centres, and submarine cable touchdown issues as Important Nationwide Data Infrastructure in 2024. Whether or not the rustic treats that designation as an operational dedication will decide how resilient the ₦3.4 quadrillion financial system proves to be when the following disruption happens.
Emenike is a Social Commentator and Coverage Analyst