NIBSS Builds National Payment Stack on Open-Source Technology

The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) has built its new National Payment Stack on open-source technology supplied by the US payments software company Transactility, in a move that gives Nigeria's payments infrastructure greater control over its own architecture.

The announcement, made by Transactility, confirms that NIBSS's next-generation platform runs on the jPOS ecosystem and the jPTS switch — proven, widely deployed payments software rather than a proprietary, closed system.

What the National Payment Stack does

The National Payment Stack is an ISO 20022 instant-payments platform designed for the scale and demands of the Nigerian market. It supports instant account-to-account transfers, QR-code merchant payments, alias-based addressing — allowing a phone number to serve as a payment address — and bulk payments.

Crucially, NIBSS has obtained full access to the source code. That gives the institution control over its own architecture, product roadmap and intellectual property, freeing it from reliance on a vendor's release schedule and licensing terms. For critical national infrastructure, that kind of sovereignty matters: it means Nigerian engineers can adapt the platform directly to local needs and security requirements.

Premier Oiwoh, NIBSS's managing director and chief executive, said the platform "was designed and built for the scale and demands of the Nigerian payments market." Alejandro Revilla, founder and chief technology officer of Transactility, said the company was proud that NIBSS had selected technologies from the jPOS ecosystem.

Built for volume

Nigeria's instant-payment volumes have exploded in recent years, driven by mobile money, agent banking, point-of-sale expansion and fintech innovation. The National Payment Stack has already surpassed 100 million transactions, a sign that it is handling real traffic rather than running as a pilot. Reports indicate it will not immediately replace existing instant-transfer services, with a gradual migration likely.

Business Insight

Payments infrastructure is the plumbing of a modern economy, and control over that plumbing is strategic. By owning the source code, NIBSS can respond faster to fraud, outages and changing market demands, and can avoid the recurring licence fees and upgrade cycles that proprietary systems impose.

The choice of open-source technology also signals a maturing approach to public digital infrastructure. Rather than buying a black box, Nigeria is building institutional capability around a platform its own teams can modify. That is a meaningful shift for a country that has sometimes paid dearly for imported, opaque technology in critical sectors.

The commercial beneficiaries are widespread. Banks, fintechs, merchants and agents all depend on the rails that NIBSS operates. A faster, more reliable and more adaptable platform lowers the cost of processing payments, which in turn makes digital transactions cheaper and more attractive — a prerequisite for deepening financial inclusion.

The platform's resilience is now the priority. Given how many transactions traverse NIBSS, even brief outages can disrupt the entire economy, as past downtime incidents have shown. Owning the code is a start; running it flawlessly at national scale is the enduring challenge.

Background

NIBSS is owned by the Central Bank of Nigeria and licensed banks, and operates the country's core interbank settlement and instant-payment infrastructure. It has been upgrading its systems to handle rising volumes and to meet global standards such as ISO 20022, which governs payment messaging. The National Payment Stack is central to that modernisation effort.

Conclusion

NIBSS's adoption of Transactility's jPOS technology is a quiet but consequential upgrade to Nigeria's financial plumbing. By taking ownership of its payments architecture, the country gains speed, flexibility and control. The next test is reliability — keeping the rails running as volumes continue to climb.