When the open banking go-live was set for August 2025, it felt like the industry’s most anticipated moment had finally arrived. Yet, as that date quietly slipped by, many began to wonder whether this silence equaled failure.
For many observers, the quiet has been confusing. But for those who have followed Nigeria’s open banking story closely, this cycle of momentum and silence is nothing new.
Since it first entered national conversation in 2018 with the formation of Open Banking Nigeria, the journey has been a mix of momentum and pauses. We had early traction from the industry initiative, followed by a long silence, then the first regulatory greenlight, the release of the regulatory framework in 2021, another quiet stretch, and finally, the operational guidelines in 2023.
So yes, the silence is familiar. But this one doesn’t mean inactivity. Even though there hasn’t been much public update from the CBN, work has been going on steadily behind the scenes. We go into all the details in this article.
Since the open banking go-live announcement in April, here’s what’s been happening:
The April 2025 go-live announcement set off the biggest wave of public interest yet, with webinars, workshops, and plenty of speculation about what would happen next. But that was only the beginning of the less glamorous, but far more important phase: the implementation build-out.
To make adoption as smooth as possible, the CBN set up a central steering committee and five dedicated workstreams, bringing together experts from banks, fintechs, consulting firms, and regulatory bodies. In simple terms, their role was to ensure a coordinated and sustainable open banking rollout. They designed the infrastructure, standards, and operational processes that would turn open banking from policy into practice.
Each workstream focused on a core area:
Governance and Regulatory Workstream
The governance and regulatory workstream defined how the entire system would be governed, who oversees what, and how compliance would be enforced. They reviewed existing open banking regulations, refined operational frameworks, and developed the business requirements for the Open Banking Registry, which will serve as the official directory of licensed participants in Nigeria’s open banking ecosystem.
Legal and Compliance Workstream
This team was focused on building trust and accountability in the open banking ecosystem. They designed the legal scaffolding that protects both institutions and consumers, including consent forms, service level agreements, non-disclosure agreements, and participation terms and conditions that set clear rules for how institutions can access and use customer data.
The workstream also created a compliance monitoring framework to ensure that every participating bank, fintech, or third party adheres to existing data protection and privacy laws. Their work ensures that when open banking finally launches, it does so within a strong legal ecosystem. One that protects both innovation and the individual consumer.
Data Privacy and Security Workstream
The data privacy workstream developed the security standards, authentication protocols, and incident response processes that define how participants can prevent breaches and how the ecosystem responds when they occur.
Among their key deliverables are the Consent Management Framework, which details how customers will give, track, and withdraw permission for data sharing, API Secure Coding Guidelines, Incident Response and Breach Management Plan, and a Third-Party Risk Management Framework.
Technical and Infrastructure Workstream
This workstream refined the technical language of Nigeria’s open banking system. They developed the Open API specifications, which define how banks, fintechs, and third parties will connect, exchange, and authenticate data consistently and securely.
Beyond the technical layer, the team paid strong attention to a critical part of adoption: user experience. Drawing from global standards like the UK’s Customer Experience Guidelines, they created Nigeria’s own version tailored to local realities.
Nigeria’s open banking UX Guidelines map the customer journey across multiple channels, including web, mobile, USSD, and offline touchpoints. This ensures that the customer consent process feels familiar, intuitive, and secure across all channels.
Stakeholder Engagement and Advocacy Workstream
One of the most important parts of open banking is adoption. People won’t use what they don’t understand or trust. And that’s exactly what this workstream set out to fix.
Unlike the other workstreams, you can’t put a full stop or a deadline to engagement, because as the ecosystem grows, new players, new products, and new users will keep entering the space. So, this team’s work was about creating the foundation for consistent, long-term communication and trust-building across the industry.
The workstream’s focus was on building trust, the currency that will define open banking’s real success in Nigeria. To strengthen this, they designed a unified brand manual for Open Banking in Nigeria to ensure that every participant communicates open banking with clarity, credibility, and consistency. They have also produced communication guides to help participants explain open banking to the stakeholders who matter most: the consumers. These toolkits translate technical concepts like consent and data sharing into relatable, everyday language, so customers understand not just what open banking is, but why it benefits them.
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By the August deadline, most of this work had been completed, and the deliverables were already under review for final approval by the CBN. Once the reviews and approvals are completed, the official timelines for adoption will follow, and with them, Nigeria will take its place as the first African country to officially go live with open banking.
This next stage is critical, not just because open banking is one of Nigeria’s most transformative financial initiatives, but also because, as the CBN Governor has repeatedly emphasized, the regulator is committed to ensuring readiness and protection before the system goes live.
Why the current silence isn’t a setback
The truth is, Nigeria’s open banking journey has always been methodical, not rushed. Unlike the UK, Brazil, or Australia, whose timelines were relatively shorter, Nigeria’s journey has been slower and more deliberate. That’s partly due to our financial complexity, but also because the CBN wanted the ecosystem itself to help build the system.
This decision to build implementation with the industry, rather than impose it top-down, may have elongated the timelines, but it has also helped create stronger foundations for long-term success.
While the public conversation may have gone quiet, there’s no better time for the industry to strengthen its internal readiness ahead of the final regulatory greenlight.
So, has Nigeria’s open banking conversation lost momentum? Publicly, maybe. But behind the scenes, it’s entering its most defining stage. With most of the foundational work completed and awaiting CBN’s final review, the next announcement will be about activation. The institutions that choose to prepare now will define what open banking success looks like in Nigeria, while the others will be left behind playing catch-up.
