Two months before the deadline, half of Nigeria's banks and fintechs have not started moving their payment data home. A survey by the National Information Technology Development Agency found that 22 of 44 financial institutions had not begun work to meet the Central Bank of Nigeria's data localisation rule, which requires payment transaction data generated in Nigeria to be stored and managed in the country from 1 January 2027, Nairametrics reports.
The figures were presented on Wednesday, 28 October, at an executive dialogue on the National Sovereign Cloud Initiative and data localisation that the two regulators held in Lagos for banks, fintechs and payment infrastructure firms. TheStak reported the call to that meeting earlier this month.
How ready the industry says it is
Of the 44 institutions that answered the readiness question, 26 said they had completed, or were likely to complete, the required work before the deadline, about 59%. Fifteen said completion was unlikely or very unlikely, and three could not say. Those still to start have budgeting, contract negotiations and system migration ahead of them, according to the survey as reported by Nairametrics. NITDA's director-general, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, put the ready share at 57% when he spoke at the event, ThisDay reports.
The answers were self-reported and anonymised, and do not amount to a compliance check. Among digital infrastructure providers, 79% said they were ready to take on new financial-sector workloads.
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Rakiya Yusuf, director of the CBN's payments system supervision department, said the survey showed "more than 50 per cent of the industry are ready to comply" and that the bank expects everyone to be on board by January. She said the CBN would first help institutions comply rather than punish them, but "where we see that there is a deliberate attempt to scuttle it, of course, sanctions will come", ThisDay reports.
The rule comes from a CBN circular of 15 June 2026 that also covers payments market structure, disclosure of ultimate beneficial owners and systemic oversight. Lamido Yuguda, the CBN's deputy governor for financial system stability, warned that "localisation alone does not guarantee security": firms and their technology providers still need strong cybersecurity, disaster recovery and continuity plans.
Inuwa said Nigerian companies spend more than $850 million a year on cloud services, Nairametrics reports, and that 326 government agencies spent more than ₦3.8 trillion on technology between June 2023 and October 2026, much of which could move to shared cloud services, according to ThisDay. Arise News also reported the 57% figure.
