Key questions this article answers:
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What role did the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS)—Nigeria’s payments infrastructure provider—play in facilitating Nigeria’s digital payments revolution?
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Is NIBSS well-positioned to provide ongoing support to our future digital economy?
Russia taught us one lesson last year—it sucks to be blacklisted from the global payments network.
On March 2022, VISA and Mastercard suspended services to several Russian banks to comply with US sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Overnight, Russians found their cards could no longer make payments on foreign websites. Many were left scrambling to find cash-dispensing ATMs as their fate had been decided by companies headquartered in the US—5,000 miles away.
It could have been a ghastlier tale if not for Mir, Russia’s state-backed payment system, which allowed domestic transactions to carry on as usual.
To be fair, Russia is a unique case. Nigeria isn’t currently at risk of being booted by a
