The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has restated that financial institutions and fintechs must host payments data generated in Nigeria inside the country by 1 January 2027, according to ThisDay.
What the CBN said
ThisDay reports that the CBN issued its circular on 15 June 2026, requiring payments transaction data generated in Nigeria but hosted abroad to be brought back for local hosting and management. Officials repeated the position at the CloudReady Nigeria financial services roundtable in Lagos, organised by Africa Hyperscalers.
"The compliance date hasn't changed. It's 1st of January, 2027," said Rakiya Opemi Yusuf, the CBN's director of payments systems supervision, in an address delivered by a representative. Her colleague Babatunde Ajiboye called the deadline "sacrosanct".
The CBN said it will begin reviewing compliance from 1 January 2027, and told firms the job starts with "a complete data audit", according to ThisDay.
The regulator is moving too
The CBN said some of its own sensitive payments data is also hosted outside Nigeria and that it has started migrating it home, according to ThisDay.
Where the pushback is
ThisDay reports that some fintechs fear losing sensitive data during migration, some institutions doubt the competence of local data centres, and others plan to move only a small portion of their data.
Local providers at the roundtable argued the capacity exists. MTN Nigeria's Lynda Saint-Nwafor said the company has "thousands of servers spread over 12 data centres in Nigeria", and Open Access Data Centres' Ayotunde Coker pointed to its PCI DSS certification, according to ThisDay.
What to do now
- Map every system that stores Nigerian payment data and where it is hosted.
- Decide what moves, what is retired and what needs a local copy.
- Test migrations before the year-end rush, not after.
