In 2018, a relatively unknown fintech, OPay, entered Nigeria’s already crowded digital payments market.
At the time, Nigerians already had bank apps, USSD codes, and a handful of wallet providers that mostly worked. But OPay did something unusual. They didn’t lead with flashy features or aggressive user acquisition. They reduced cost and friction in ways people could immediately see. Cashback on every transaction. Competitive fee structures. No hidden charges. Clear terms. And most importantly, they made sure the money showed up when they said it would.
Within a few years, OPay had millions of users, not because they invented anything new, but because they understood something fundamental. In Nigeria, trust isn’t given at launch; it’s earned transaction by transaction, promise by promise, until just enough people can vouch for you. Open banking is just about to enter this same arena. And the conversation now isn’t about whether the infrastructure will work. The question is whether Nigerians will believe it was built to work for them.
The trust deficit isn’t about ignorance
If as an innovator, you still think Nigerians do not trust easily, you’re not paying attention.
Nigerians trust plenty of things. We trust the POS lady at the junction who often holds our card in her hand, the group savings collector who comes around every other week, and even referrals from people we know over advertisements from institutions we don’t. What we don’t trust easily are systems that have historically failed us, or systems that feel designed to benefit someone else at our expense.
And this isn’t paranoia. It’s more of a pattern recognition.
The average Nigerian navigates institutional failure daily. NAFDAC exists, but fake drugs still circulate. Road safety agencies exist, but road travel remains a calculated risk. Police exist, but many Nigerians see them as another layer of expense to manage, not protection. When it comes to money, the stakes get even higher. This is rent. School fees. Business capital.
So if we talk about launching open banking, we cannot expect excitement as a first response. Open banking isn’t just asking for data access. It’s asking for a leap of faith. It asks Nigerians to grant permission for one financial service provider to access data from another provider they already use. To trust that this data will only be used for what they agreed to. To trust that they can revoke access if they change their mind. And to trust that if something goes wrong, the right institution will be held accountable. In markets where institutions generally work and regulators visibly enforce rules, this might feel reasonable.In Nigeria, where trust in institutions is conditional at best, this is a much heavier ask.
Open banking will not succeed simply by being well-designed or well-regulated. It will succeed when the people it’s meant to serve believe the system is on their side. And building that belief requires deliberate, sustained effort across several critical areas.
Standardisation
One of the quieter strengths of Nigeria’s open banking framework is its emphasis on standardisation. Common consent flows. Unified customer experience guidelines. Consent notification templates that banks and fintechs must follow. On the surface, this looks like good governance. And it is. But standardisation does something else that matters more than most builders realise. It creates familiarity.
When a Nigerian customer sees the same open banking consent screen whether they’re connecting their Sterling bank account or their GTBank account, that consistency reduces cognitive load. In a low-trust environment, familiarity is a form of comfort. Predictable flows and consistent language work together to reduce fear and build trust. And when revocation works the same way across platforms, it reinforces the idea that control still sits with the customer.
This matters because Nigerians are already mentally taxed. We’re navigating fraud risks, poor service delivery, and institutional unpredictability across every part of daily life. The last thing anyone wants is to learn a new set of rules every time they try to use a financial service powered by open banking. The Central Bank’s planned open banking consent management system strengthens this further. By providing a centralised dashboard where customers can view and manage all their consents across different service providers, the system makes control tangible.
So yes, standardisation is a technical requirement. But in practice, it’s also a trust signal. And in Nigeria, trust signals matter more than features.
Clear consent language
Most consent flows today are designed to protect institutions, not to inform customers. Long blocks of legalese. A single checkbox at the bottom. No clear explanation of what happens if you say no. No visible way to undo what you just agreed to. This might satisfy compliance requirements, but it does little to build trust. In Nigeria, where people have learned to assume the worst until proven otherwise, consent needs to do more than exist. It needs to communicate.
What does that look like in practice?
It means showing customers exactly what data is being requested. Not “transaction history,” but “your salary deposits, rent payments, and recurring bills from the last x months.” It means explaining why this data is needed in plain language. Not “to enhance your experience,” but “so we can see your income pattern and offer you a loan amount that fits your actual cash flow.” It means giving customers control over duration. “Access for three months” or “Access until you revoke it” should be options, not default settings. And it means making revocation visible and easy. If a customer has to dig through settings or call a helpline to withdraw consent, that’s friction dressed up as choice.
Consent done right doesn’t just protect the customer. It also disciplines the ecosystem. When players know that consent can be revoked easily, they have to earn the right to keep it.
Inclusive language
English is Nigeria’s official language. But English is not how most Nigerians think about money. A significant portion of the population processes critical decisions in Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, or Pidgin. When a bank or fintech says, “Here’s what you’re agreeing to,” and the customer can read the terms in a language they fully understand, this signals that the system was built for the end users. Beyond accessibility, language choice largely shapes who gets included in Nigeria’s open banking ecosystem. Full multilingual localisation may not be realistic at launch. But even starting with plain, conversational English, free of jargon and legalese, would separate responsible players from everyone else. The goal isn’t to sound sophisticated. The goal is to be understood. And in a system built on consent, understanding determines adoption.
Owning the narrative early
Right now, most Nigerians don’t know what open banking is, even after years of industry education. Even some industry leaders still don’t have a full understanding of it. That’s fine. They didn’t know what USSD was either, until it became one of the most common ways to transact. But here’s the risk: if the first time Nigerians hear about open banking is through a WhatsApp forward warning them that “banks are now sharing your data,” then we’ve lost hold of the narrative.
Fear spreads faster than facts. And once people believe a system is designed to exploit them, no amount of after-the-fact clarification will undo that perception. This is why narrative ownership matters, and it needs to start now, not after launch. Banks and fintechs should be using the existing communication channels to set expectations early.
“Here’s what’s changing, what stays the same, what you control, and how we’re protecting you.”
Nigeria’s most successful innovators don’t wait until millions of users sign up to communicate value. They make sure people understand what they are getting into before they commit. And this early transparency becomes a part of their credibility. Open banking builders can do the same. Because trust isn’t something you market after launch, but something you build into every conversation leading up to it.
Visible consequences
One of the most under-discussed aspects of trust in Nigeria is this: people don’t just want to know what happens when things go right. They want to know what happens when things go wrong. And right now, most Nigerians couldn’t tell you.
If a bank defaults, who do you report to? What’s the process? Is there a timeline? What are the consequences? What happens to you? The safeguards may already exist in regulation. But if customers don’t know how to access them, they might as well not exist. Clear, public communication around redress does two things. It reassures customers that there’s a system in place if something goes wrong. And it disciplines ecosystem players, because everyone knows that misconduct has visible consequences. This is where transparency becomes accountability. And accountability is what turns regulatory frameworks into lived protection. If open banking wants to be trusted, it can’t just promise that nothing will go wrong. It has to show Nigerians exactly what happens if it does.
Proof through consistency
Moniepoint didn’t win over millions of small businesses just by explaining their value proposition in keynote speeches. They won by making sure that when a trader in Alaba needed to collect payment at 9 p.m. on a Saturday, their banking app worked.
Trust in Nigeria doesn’t scale through marketing alone. It scales through consistency, social proof, and lived experience. This has a direct implication for open banking. The first wave of users won’t adopt because the framework is elegant or because the regulator said it’s safe. They’ll adopt because someone they know tried it and nothing bad happened. And then they’ll stay because it keeps working for them. That’s the trust curve in Nigeria. Slow at first. Steep once momentum builds. But only if the early experience doesn’t break.
Spotlight read: What Open Banking success should look like in Nigeria
What this means for the ecosystem
Open banking in Nigeria has real potential. It will make credit fairer, financial management easier, and service delivery more responsive. But none of that matters if trust is treated as an afterthought.
The foundation already exists in our regulation: standardisation that creates familiarity and reduces friction, a centralized consent system that makes control visible and a regulatory framework that outlines protection. Unfortunately, most Nigerians will never read the regulations. However, they will judge the system by their experience. Did a service deliver on its promise? Were there any bad surprises? Were the terms clearly communicated? Could they easily revoke access?
The encouraging thing is that Nigeria already knows how to build trust at scale. We’ve seen it happen with payments, wallets, POS systems, and digital banking. Open banking now has to walk that same path. The first institutions to get it right will be the ones Nigerians adopt. Not necessarily because they launched first, but because when users took that leap of faith, their system proved worthy of it.
