Passpoint, the financial infrastructure company building the orchestration layer for cross-border financial operations, today announced its formal positioning as the financial orchestration layer for Africa, Europe, and the G20.

The announcement marks a defining moment for a company that has spent the past several years building the infrastructure layer that the African and global payment ecosystem has been missing: not another gateway, not another PSP, but the governed control plane that sits above the rails and makes fragmented markets operable as one.
Passpoint today processes millions of dollars in annualised payment volume across more than 300 merchants in 16 corridors spanning Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Cameroon, the XOF region, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The platform is live, scaled, and used by fintechs, enterprises, gaming operators, remittance providers, marketplaces, and SaaS platforms building and operating across the intersection of African and global payment markets.

The Infrastructure Gap Passpoint Was Built to Close
Africa’s payment infrastructure has developed market by market, producing a continent of powerful but fragmented rails. M-Pesa in Kenya.

The NIP interbank network in Nigeria. Mobile money operators across francophone West Africa. Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) system in South Africa. Each rail solves a real problem in its specific market.

None of them solve the problem that scaling businesses face when they need to operate across all of them simultaneously, while managing compliance in multiple jurisdictions, FX across multiple currencies, and settlement across multiple time zones.
The businesses attempting to solve this problem through a patchwork of individual provider integrations face a compounding operational burden: engineering teams spending 30 to 50 percent of their payment-related capacity on maintenance rather than product development, finance teams manually reconciling settlement data across multiple provider dashboards, compliance teams managing separate regulatory frameworks per market, and treasury teams with no unified visibility into liquidity positions across currencies and corridors.
Passpoint was built to replace the patchwork with a single, governed infrastructure layer. A single API integration provides access to every major African payment method alongside G20 rails, with intelligent routing across providers in real time, compliance logic embedded at the transaction layer rather than managed as a parallel manual process, FX management at institutional rates across African and global currency pairs, and unified settlement and reconciliation across all markets and currencies through a single operational interface.
“The payments infrastructure challenge in Africa is not about moving money,” said Kelechi Uchegbulem, Co-Founder and CEO of Passpoint. “Every gateway moves money. The challenge is governing it: routing intelligently across fragmented rails, staying compliant across jurisdictions that do not share regulatory frameworks, managing FX exposure across currencies that global providers do not understand deeply enough, and settling predictably across markets that operate on different timescales. We built Passpoint to be the layer that governs all of it. Not a tool you add to your stack. The infrastructure your stack runs on.”

What Passpoint Orchestrates
Passpoint’s financial orchestration layer provides six core capabilities through a single integration.
Intelligent payment routing selects the optimal path for every transaction at transaction time, based on real-time success rate data, cost, settlement speed, FX efficiency, and compliance status across available providers. Automatic fallback logic executes when primary routing paths fail, before merchants or customers see a failure notification.
Embedded compliance applies jurisdiction-specific regulatory logic, including KYC requirements, AML screening, transaction monitoring, and reporting obligations, automatically at the point of transaction processing.

Passpoint holds direct licences from the Central Bank of Nigeria and operates under FINTRAC in Canada, with PSD2-compliant infrastructure across 24 EU countries and the United Kingdom.
Multi-currency treasury management provides businesses with real-time visibility into multi-currency balance positions, institutional FX sourcing across African and G20 currency pairs, and control over conversion timing, replacing the passive FX absorption model of standard gateway settlement with active treasury management.
Unified settlement and reconciliation consolidates settlement data across all providers, markets, currencies, and payment methods into a single reporting layer, eliminating the manual reconciliation overhead of managing multiple provider relationships.
Real-time operational control gives finance, operations, and technical teams full visibility into payment activity, routing decisions, settlement positions, and compliance status across all markets through a single dashboard and API.

A New Category: Financial Orchestration
Passpoint’s announcement is as much a category creation as it is a product announcement. The company is positioning financial orchestration as a distinct infrastructure layer, separate from and above the payment gateway category that has defined African fintech infrastructure for the past decade.
“The businesses building at the frontier of African and global commerce are not asking for a better gateway,” said Adejuwon Oyebanjo, Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Passpoint. “They are asking for control. Control over how their payments are routed. Control over their FX exposure. Control over their compliance posture across multiple regulatory environments. Control over their settlement and their cash position at any given moment. That is what orchestration means in practice: not moving money from A to B, but governing every dimension of the financial operation that sits between A and B. Passpoint gives businesses that control through a single integration, and that changes the economics of operating across African and global markets in ways that individual provider relationships simply cannot.”
The distinction between orchestration and gateway infrastructure has direct commercial implications. Businesses that have made the transition from multi-provider gateway models to Passpoint’s orchestration layer report meaningful improvements across multiple dimensions: higher transaction success rates through intelligent routing and fallback, lower effective FX costs through institutional rate access and conversion timing control, reduced engineering maintenance overhead through consolidated integration, faster market entry through pre-built compliance and rail infrastructure in new corridors, and significantly reduced finance team overhead through unified reconciliation.

Built for Africa. Designed for Global Scale.
Passpoint operates at the intersection of two infrastructure realities: the complexity of African payment markets, where fragmentation, regulatory variance, and FX challenges create operational burdens that most global infrastructure was not built to handle, and the standards of global financial systems, where reliability, compliance, and auditability are non-negotiable requirements for enterprise-grade operations.
The platform’s corridor coverage spans the highest-priority markets for businesses operating at the African-global intersection.

In Africa: Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, and Guinea. Globally: 24 EU countries, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Each corridor is supported by direct rail access, licensed operational infrastructure, and compliance logic specific to the regulatory environment of that market.
“We are not a European infrastructure company that has added African payment methods to a global platform,” said Uchegbulem. “And we are not an African payment company that has bolted on some international capabilities. We built Passpoint from the ground up for the specific operational reality of businesses that need to work across both worlds simultaneously. That is a different design problem than either of those starting points, and it required a different kind of infrastructure to solve.”

Customer Traction and Market Validation
Passpoint’s current merchant base spans the verticals where African and global payment complexity is most acute: fintechs building cross-border payment products, gaming operators collecting deposits and processing withdrawals across African markets, remittance operators running Africa-to-Europe and Africa-to-North America corridors, SaaS platforms collecting subscription revenue from African subscriber bases, marketplaces disbursing to large African seller and worker populations, and enterprises managing cross-border supplier payments across African and global markets.
The platform’s annualised payment volume reflects the scale of the infrastructure problem it is solving: billions of dollars in cross-border financial flows that previously moved through fragmented, manually managed, operationally expensive payment infrastructure, now governed through a single, intelligent, unified control plane.

About Passpoint
Passpoint is the financial orchestration layer for Africa, Europe, and the G20. The company unifies payments, compliance, liquidity, and settlement into one governed control plane, enabling businesses to operate across African and global markets through a single integration without rebuilding their infrastructure for every new corridor.
With operations spanning 16 corridors across Africa, Europe, the United Kingdom, China, and the United States, the company holds direct licences from the Central Bank of Nigeria, operates under FINTRAC in Canada, holds a Virtual Asset Service Provider licence from the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Poland, and provides PSD2-compliant infrastructure across 24 EU countries and the United Kingdom.

The Nigerian private sector remained in growth territory at the start of the second quarter of the year as customer numbers and market demand continued to strengthen.

That said, the impacts of higher fuel costs as a result of the war in the Middle East were felt again, pushing up prices and reportedly limiting expansions in new orders and business activity. The headline figure derived from the survey is the Stanbic IBTC Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI).

Readings above 50.0 signal an improvement in business conditions on the previous month, while readings below 50.0 show a deterioration.

The headline PMI ticked up to 52.4 in April from 51.9 in March, above the 50.0 no-change mark for the third month running and signalling a solid strengthening in the health of the private sector. The rate of improvement was slightly greater than that seen in the previous survey period.

Muyiwa Oni, Head of Equity Research West Africa at Stanbic IBTC Bank commented: “The health of Nigeria’s private sector improved in April – remaining above the 50-points growth threshold for the third consecutive month – as new orders increased in line with higher customer numbers and rising demand even as price pressures remain prevalent.

Accordingly, the headline PMI increased to 52.4 points in April from 51.9 points seen in March. Despite the improvement in new orders, we understand that lingering inflationary pressures limited the pace of expansion. Notably, companies increased their selling prices in April to the highest level since December 2024 in response to rising fuel and raw material costs.

Staff costs also increased modestly as some companies increased their staff pay so as to help them with increasing transportation fares. Business expectations also improved in April compared to March as businesses plan to expand their operations through the opening of new branches, stock building, and entry into new markets.

“The improved start of the second quarter of the year by Nigerian businesses continues to support our view of improved growth expectations in 2026 relative to 2025. Hence, we still maintain our expectation that the Nigerian economy is likely to grow by 4.22% y/y in 2026, from 3.87% y/y in 2025. We estimate the non-oil sector’s growth at 4.24% y/y in 2026, from 3.71% y/y in 2025, likely driven primarily by services, which we see growing by 5.64% y/y in 2026 (vs 2025: 4.14% y/y).

The government’s continuous investment attraction across oil & gas, solid minerals, electricity, agriculture and general manufacturing should continue to support sentiment on production activity. However, the oil sector’s growth is likely to moderate to 3.01% y/y (vs 2025: 8.50% y/y), as we now expect crude oil production (including condensates) to average 1.70m bpd, from 1.64m bpd in 2025.”

Improving demand conditions meant that new orders continued to rise, albeit with the rate of growth softening amid inflationary pressures. Business activity also increased, and at a solid pace that was slightly faster than that seen in March.

Here too, however, companies mentioned that rising prices had limited the pace of growth. Activity rose in three of the four monitored sectors, the exception being services. Anecdotal evidence suggested that prices were often driven higher by increased fuel costs due to the war in the Middle East.

Purchase prices increased rapidly, with the rate of inflation little-changed from March’s 15-month high. Meanwhile, staff costs rose modestly as companies in some cases increased pay to help workers deal with higher transportation fares. The pass through of increased input costs to customers resulted in a further sharp rise in output prices, with the rate of inflation quickening to the fastest since December 2024.

Companies took on extra staff in April in response to rising workloads, but the rate of job creation was only marginal and the softest in three months. Some firms reported that staff shortages had been behind the latest accumulation of backlogs of work, while others cited customer payment delays and issues securing raw materials. Outstanding business increased for the third consecutive month in April.

Further efforts were made to secure materials, with purchasing activity increasing for the seventeenth month running in April. Stocks of purchases also rose amid improving customer demand, and at a marked pace that was the sharpest in five months.

Where companies placed orders for materials, they often made sure to pay on time in order to secure deliveries. As a result, supplier lead times shortened again, albeit to the least extent in 2026 so far.

Business sentiment ticked higher in April, with companies often citing plans to expand operations. Half of all respondents predicted that their output will increase over the next 12 months.

L–R: Austen Osokpor, Head, Marketing and Corporate Communications, Ecobank Nigeria; Daniel Taiwo, Leader, Platform School Chess Team and winners of the 2025 edition; Prince Adeyinka Adewole, Vice President, Nigeria Chess Federation; and Ambesh Kumar, Head of Marketing, SchoolMate Nigeria, at the press conference announcing the Ecobank National Schools’ Team Chess Championship 2026 in Lagos.

All arrangements have been concluded for the 2026 Ecobank National Schools’ Team Chess Championship, organised in partnership with the Nigeria Chess Federation (NCF) and SchoolMate.

The championship will hold from 7–8 May 2026 at the Ecobank Pan African Centre (EPAC), Lagos, and is expected to feature about 1,500 pupils and students from 300 schools nationwide.

Speaking ahead of the third edition of the tournament, Ecobank’s Segment Head for Education, Faith and Social Services, Adekunle Adewuyi, said the bank remains committed to scaling the championship as a pathway for developing Nigeria’s next generation of intellectual and strategic leaders.

According to him, the championship has evolved into a strong national platform for nurturing talent and promoting critical thinking among young Nigerians.

“This championship has become a leading national platform for identifying and nurturing emerging chess talents. Chess is a powerful educational tool; it sharpens critical thinking, problem-solving and discipline. Through this initiative, we are preparing young Nigerians not just for competition, but for leadership roles in the future,” Adewuyi said.

He described the tournament as a rapidly growing, award-winning scholastic competition that attracts thousands of students annually and promotes intellectual development while fostering future chess grandmasters.

Reflecting on previous editions, Adewuyi noted the significant growth in participation: “Last year’s edition recorded massive growth, with over 2,500 students from 450 schools participating. We are confident this year’s edition will surpass that milestone.”

Also speaking, Vice President of the Nigeria Chess Federation, Prince Adeyinka Adewole Samuel, said the championship aligns with global standards set by the International Chess Federation (FIDE), which encourages countries to organise structured school-level competitions.

According to him, the tournament targets primary and secondary school students aged 7–18, as part of a deliberate strategy to build a sustainable pipeline of future grandmasters.

Prince Adeyinka disclosed that about 150 primary schools and 150 secondary schools are expected to participate this year, with each school fielding five players, bringing the total number of participants to approximately 1,500 students from about 15 states. He added that the competition will feature a ₦20 million prize pool.

He also revealed that enhanced measures have been introduced to improve event delivery, including strict player eligibility checks, enhanced crowd control, and the deployment of 50 trained arbiters to guarantee fairness and transparency.

Highlighting the impact of the initiative, Prince Adeyinka noted that Nigerian students who emerged from the Ecobank championship have excelled at continental competitions.

“The growth has been phenomenal. When Nigeria competes at continental tournaments, many of the standout players are alumni of the Ecobank championship. We won a gold medal last year in Uganda, and that success is strongly linked to what Ecobank has done,” he said.

On his part, Marketing Head of SchoolMate Nigeria, Ambesh Kumar, said the company partnered with the initiative to support youth development through education and sport, noting that chess helps children build discipline, focus and strategic thinking.

“We are passionate about quality education for children, and we see this tournament as a veritable means of advancing that cause. Last year, we distributed books to the children, and this year marks our first involvement as a co-sponsor. SchoolMate has operated in Nigeria for several years, and we see this chess championship as a meaningful way of giving back to society,” Kumar stated.

The Ecobank National Schools’ Team Chess Championship continues to grow as a nationwide platform for discovering young talents while equipping students with confidence, teamwork, leadership and strategic skills essential for future success.

L-R: Mr. Chike Onwuegbuchi, Chairman, Nigeria Information Technology Reporters’ Association (NITRA); Prof. Adewale Obadare, Chief Visionary Officer, Digital Encode; Ms. Unwana Enang, Product Manager, Moniepoint Group; Mr. Chika Nwosu, Managing Director, PalmPay Nigeria and Peter Oluka, Editor. TechEconomy at the Payment Forum Nigeria 3.0 held in Lagos recently.

Stakeholders at the Payment Forum Nigeria 2026 have emphasised the need for robust and reliable payment infrastructure to drive financial inclusion, particularly among small businesses, merchants, and agents.

Speaking at the forum, David Ijaola of TeamApt, a subsidiary of Moniepoint Inc., said payment systems must be “reliable, reachable, and relevant” to support inclusive economic growth.

Representing the Chief Executive Officer of TeamApt Ltd., Dennis Ajalie, Ijaola explained that the company operates as a Central Bank of Nigeria-licensed payments infrastructure provider, offering services across switching, non-bank acquiring, Payment Terminal Service Provision (PTSP), and super-agent frameworks.

He said these capabilities enable the company to deliver financial services through gateways, point-of-sale (POS) devices, and agent networks across Nigeria’s 774 local government areas.

Ijaola described the switching layer as the “traffic controller” of digital transactions, responsible for routing payments between financial institutions and verifying approvals within seconds, often without users recognising the complexity behind the process.

He illustrated the growing dependence on digital payments with a real-life example of a roadside fruit vendor managing multiple POS devices and operating several micro-outlets, underscoring how even small-scale businesses are now integrated into the digital financial ecosystem.

According to him, small and medium enterprises contribute about 48 per cent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product and account for roughly 84 per cent of employment, yet nearly 95 per cent fail within five years.

He said this highlights the urgent need for stronger financial infrastructure and support systems to improve business sustainability.

“The next wave of financial inclusion will be driven organically by merchants themselves, as they encourage customers to adopt digital payments,” he said.

To achieve this, Ijaola identified three critical pillars — reliability, reach, and relevance.

He explained that reliability must include features such as instant transaction reversals and strong security frameworks, while reach involves expanding access through agent networks and multiple service channels.

Relevance, he added, requires designing financial products that align with users’ behaviour, literacy levels, and everyday realities.

On innovation, Ijaola pointed to the under-utilisation of direct debit systems in Nigeria, noting that they account for less than one per cent of transactions despite their potential to automate recurring payments.

He said TeamApt’s direct debit solution, integrated into its POS terminals and Monnify payment gateway, is already being used for micro-pension contributions, insurance premiums, and loan repayments, thereby extending structured financial services to underserved communities.

He also highlighted opportunities in cross-border payments and artificial intelligence-driven platforms, including messaging applications, where transactions could become as simple as sending a text message.

In his remarks, Peter Oluka described the forum as a platform for shaping a more inclusive and equitable digital payments ecosystem.

Oluka stressed that financial inclusion must go beyond access to address affordability, security, and usability, particularly for underserved populations such as rural women, gig workers, and small business owners.

He called for stronger collaboration among regulators, financial institutions, and fintech companies to improve infrastructure, enhance cybersecurity, and embed financial services into everyday platforms.

According to him, such coordinated efforts are essential to unlocking the next phase of Nigeria’s economic growth and digital transformation.

L-R: Mr. Chike Onwuegbuchi, Chairman, Nigeria Information Technology Reporters’ Association (NITRA); Prof. Adewale Obadare, Chief Visionary Officer, Digital Encode; Ms. Unwana Enang, Product Manager, Moniepoint Group; Mr. Chika Nwosu, Managing Director, PalmPay Nigeria and Peter Oluka, Editor. TechEconomy at the Payment Forum Nigeria 3.0 held in Lagos recently.

At the third edition of Payments Forum Nigeria (PAFON 3.0), held in Lagos, PalmPay’s Managing Director, Mr. Chika Nwosu, delivered a compelling address on the transformative role of embedded finance in Africa.

Speaking on the theme “Embedded Finance in Africa: Powering Payments Where People Live, Work, and Trade”, Nwosu emphasised that the story of finance on the continent is not merely about innovation but about solving everyday problems.

He recalled that as recently as 2017, only 43 per cent of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa had access to formal financial services, with Nigeria facing even deeper exclusion. Even for those included, challenges such as network downtime and failed transactions plagued the system.

“The average Nigerian wants to synergise life, work, and business without friction. That is where embedded finance comes in,” Nwosu said, stressing that the solution lies in integrating financial services directly into platforms people already use and trust.

Highlighting the role of smartphones as gateways into the financial ecosystem, he noted that Nigeria’s large base of smartphone users presents a unique opportunity to expand access.

With small businesses and informal trade driving the economy, contributing over 80 per cent of employment and more than half of GDP in Sub-Saharan Africa, Nwosu argued that financial services must meet people where they are: in markets, on ride-hailing platforms, at POS terminals, and in online shops.

PalmPay, he explained, has focused on building infrastructure that guarantees reliability at scale, achieving a 99.95 per cent transaction success rate. “Trust is everything,” he said, adding that the company’s fraud prevention systems and human oversight have been critical to sustaining user confidence.

Beyond infrastructure, PalmPay has expanded through a network of over 500,000 agents, bringing services to the last mile, while leveraging data and AI to personalize experiences and strengthen security.

Nwosu underscored that embedded finance is already reshaping Nigeria’s digital economy by improving cash flow for small businesses, creating jobs, and moving beyond financial inclusion to meaningful usage, cautioning however, that more work remains to be done.

He outlined three priorities for unlocking the full potential of embedded finance: reliability at scale, deep ecosystem integration, and accessibility. Success, he said, will be achieved “when a trader in a remote market can transact with the same speed and confidence as a corporate executive in Lagos.”

Nwosu affirmed PalmPay’s commitment to building this future, where payments become so seamless that users no longer have to think about them at all.

L-R: Mr. Chike Onwuegbuchi, Chairman, Nigeria Information Technology Reporters’ Association (NITRA); Prof. Adewale Obadare, Chief Visionary Officer, Digital Encode; Ms. Unwana Enang, Product Manager, Moniepoint Group; Mr. Chika Nwosu, Managing Director, PalmPay Nigeria and Peter Oluka, Editor. TechEconomy at the Payment Forum Nigeria 3.0 held in Lagos recently.

CreditRegistry has called for a shift in Nigeria’s digital finance conversation from transaction volume to fairness, stressing that the future of the country’s financial system depends not merely on payment speed, but on transparency, reliability, accessibility and trust.

Speaking at the third edition of the Payments Forum Nigeria (PAFON 3.0), the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of CreditRegistry, Dr. Jameelah Sharrieff-Ayedun, represented by Mr. Chinedu Onyia, Manager, Professional Service at CreditRegistry, described the forum as more than a policy conversation, calling it “a defining moment” for economic inclusion, financial dignity, and independence for millions of Nigerians.

Addressing stakeholders at the event, she noted that Nigeria has witnessed remarkable growth in digital finance over the past decade, with instant payment transactions surpassing ₦600 trillion in 2024, according to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), positioning the country among the world’s most dynamic digital payment economies.

She also acknowledged improvements in financial inclusion, which has risen to about 64 per cent of Nigeria’s adult population, largely fuelled by mobile money, fintech innovation, and expanding agent banking networks.

However, she cautioned that these milestones should not obscure the reality that millions of Nigerians remain excluded or only partially integrated into the financial system.

“Progress must never be mistaken for completion,” she said, citing EFInA data showing that nearly 26 percent of Nigerian adults remain completely financially excluded, while many others operate at the margins of inclusion.

Describing this as Nigeria’s financial paradox, she argued that despite the country’s advanced payment infrastructure, inclusion remains uneven and vulnerable.

“Volume is not inclusion. Activity is not empowerment,” she stated, emphasizing that digital transactions that fail to create sustainable economic identity represent missed opportunities for growth and transformation.

Dr. Sharrieff-Ayedun stressed that fairness, rather than mere access, should be the central objective of Nigeria’s digital payment ecosystem.

“If digital payments are unreliable, unpredictable, or exclusionary, then they do not deepen inclusion; they erode it,” she warned.

According to her, fair digital payments are built on three essential pillars: transparency, where users understand all charges without hidden fees; reliability, where transactions are seamless and dependable; and accessibility, where systems are intentionally designed to serve all demographics, including underserved populations.

She said these pillars collectively foster trust, which she described as “the true currency of financial systems.”

Highlighting the growing significance of data in modern finance, she explained that every digital payment generates valuable financial footprints that can be transformed into structured identities and credit intelligence.

“This is the bridge between payments and credit. And this is where true financial inclusion is unlocked,” she said.

She underscored CreditRegistry’s role in converting transaction data into trust frameworks, financial behaviour into credit intelligence, and data into what she termed “dignity.”

“A decision without CreditRegistry is an incomplete decision,” she declared, reinforcing the company’s mission to provide deeper financial visibility that goes beyond transactional records to reveal character and creditworthiness.

Dr. Sharrieff-Ayedun maintained that inclusive financial systems must evolve beyond basic access to create pathways for credit, economic mobility, and generational wealth.

“We are not just building systems. We are building financial visibility for millions of Nigerians,” she said.

She concluded by urging policymakers, financial institutions, and industry stakeholders to prioritize systems that transform lives, rather than simply process payments.

“The future of Nigeria’s financial system will not be defined by how fast our payments are, but by how fair they are,” she said. “Because fairness builds trust. Trust drives inclusion. And inclusion unlocks prosperity.”

L-R: Mr. Chike Onwuegbuchi, Chairman, Nigeria Information Technology Reporters’ Association (NITRA); Prof. Adewale Obadare, Chief Visionary Officer, Digital Encode; Ms. Unwana Enang, Product Manager, Moniepoint Group; Mr. Chika Nwosu, Managing Director, PalmPay Nigeria and Peter Oluka, Editor. TechEconomy at the Payment Forum Nigeria 3.0 held in Lagos recently.

Nigeria’s fast-growing digital payments ecosystem is increasingly vulnerable to cyber threats, with cybersecurity expert and Chief Visionary Officer of Digital Encode, Prof. Adewale Peter Obadare, warning innovators and financial technology operators that neglecting cybersecurity in pursuit of rapid market expansion could undermine financial inclusion and public trust.

Presenting a keynote address at the third edition of the Payments Forum Nigeria (PAFON 3.0) held last weekend, Obadare stressed that cybersecurity regulation should not be viewed as an obstacle to innovation but as a critical enabler of sustainable digital growth, particularly in Nigeria’s payment infrastructure where electronic fraud and cybercrime remain major threats.

According to him, many fintech operators mistakenly prioritize infrastructure deployment while postponing security implementation, a strategy he described as fundamentally flawed.

“Innovators want to build infrastructure first and secure it later, but it doesn’t work like that,” he said, insisting that cybersecurity must be integrated from the outset.

Obadare, whose keynote was themed “Focus on Cybersecurity Infrastructure for Fair Payments,” noted that Nigeria’s cyberspace has witnessed heightened attacks in recent weeks, describing the nation’s payment systems as a prime target because “this is where the money is,” and argued that many of these attacks are not highly sophisticated but are often the result of organisations failing to implement basic cybersecurity measures.

“Most of the attacks we are seeing are because the basic stuff is not being done,” he said. “A lot of payment infrastructures have weak immunity on the internet, and when immunity is low, opportunistic attacks become inevitable.”

Drawing comparisons between physical and digital security, the cybersecurity specialist likened unsecured payment systems to leaving one’s home or car unlocked in a public environment, emphasising that cyberspace is inherently exposed, requiring constant vigilance and robust safeguards.

Obadare, the first Professor of Practice in Cybersecurity in Nigeria, identified cybersecurity threats and electronic fraud as the “big elephant in the room” for Nigeria’s financial ecosystem, warning that without trust, digital financial inclusion efforts could stall. “Payment is sensitive because it involves people’s money. Once trust is lost, adoption suffers,” he said.

He also highlighted how regulatory interventions have historically strengthened Nigeria’s payment ecosystem, citing the migration from magnetic stripe cards to chip-and-PIN technology as a successful example.

While explaining that such regulations significantly reduced card cloning and fraud, proving that effective cybersecurity policies enhance rather than hinder innovation, Obadare stated: “Regulation helped solve a major fraud problem. That’s what good cybersecurity regulation does—it protects innovation from collapse.”

The cybersecurity expert warned, however, that cybercriminals are continuously evolving, leveraging artificial intelligence and new technologies to exploit vulnerabilities faster and at greater scale, noting that AI has effectively placed more advanced cyberattack tools in the hands of criminals, increasing the urgency for organisations to proactively strengthen defences.

“AI is now fuelling cybercrime at an unprecedented level,” Obadare cautioned. “Cybercriminals are innovating too.”

The professor further criticized organizations that invest heavily in product development but resist spending on security architecture, describing cybersecurity as an investment rather than a cost centre. He argued that reactive crisis spending after security breaches is far more expensive than proactive protection.

“Cybersecurity is not a cost; it is an enabler,” he said. “If you fail to secure your systems, you will pay for it eventually, often at a much higher price.”

Obadare called for a strategic, architectural, and delivery-focused approach to digital payment systems, urging innovators to consistently ask whether they are “doing the right thing, doing it the right way, and getting it done well.”

He noted that building digital trust requires sustained investment in people, processes, and technology, emphasising that trust-driven systems naturally attract adoption more effectively than aggressive marketing.

“Digital trust is hard work. It is not a one-time achievement but a continuous journey,” he said. “When trust is strong, financial inclusion becomes a pull system, not a push system.”