On February 2, 2026, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) released its Fintech Policy Insight Report, developed through a survey of fintech executives, a closed-door stakeholder workshop in June 2025, and the CBN Fintech Roundtable in October 2025. The report is the clearest signal yet that the regulator is actively designing the next phase of growth for the ecosystem it oversees. Nigeria’s fintech credentials are not in question. The country rolled out nationwide real-time payments in 2011, years before the United States or India. The report shows that close to 11 billion transactions were processed through the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) Instant Payment platform in 2024, up from 5 billion in 2022. That year, Nigerian startups raised over $520 million in equity funding. Th...