Nairobi — Nigeria's latest fintech policy push is sending ripples across Africa's digital finance ecosystem, with potential implications for Kenya's fast-maturing mobile money and fintech market that has long been anchored by M-Pesa, regulatory sandboxes and a growing startup scene.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has unveiled its Policy Insight Series 2025: Shaping the Future of Fintech in Nigeria, marking a shift from rapid, market-led expansion to a deliberately structured regulatory and growth model.
The move comes as African regulators, including Kenya's Central Bank, grapple with how to balance innovation, consumer protection and cross-border scalability in an increasingly integrated digital economy.
"This is not just a policy document. It is Nigeria signalling a shift in posture from market leader by momentum to market leader by design," the report states.
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Kenya has often been cited as Africa's fintech pioneer after the launch of M-Pesa transformed mobile payments and financial inclusion.
More recently, Nairobi has positioned itself as a regional innovation hub through open banking discussions, digital credit regulation and a regulatory sandbox that has attracted local and international startups.
However, fragmentation across African markets has remained a major constraint, forcing Kenyan fintechs to relicense and reconfigure products country by country.
Nigeria's blueprint seeks to address these pain points head-on.
The CBN report notes that nearly 88 percent of fintech operators say compliance costs materially constrain innovation, while more than a third face product launch timelines exceeding a year due to regulatory delays and unclear guidance.
To counter this, the bank proposes a Single Regulatory Window, a standing fintech engagement forum and Compliance-as-a-Service utilities aimed at lowering barriers for smaller firms.
For Kenya, where policymakers are under pressure to deepen digital inclusion beyond mobile payments into credit, insurance and savings, Nigeria's focus on infrastructure is particularly instructive.
The report identifies fragmented digital identity systems, expensive APIs, non-portable credit data and fragile USSD infrastructure as structural constraints across Africa, proposing interoperable digital ID APIs and credit rails that could enable cross-border services.
But this is the first time an African regulator has attempted to consolidate innovation policy, financial inclusion, system integrity and cross-border ambition into a single framework.
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"This is not incremental reform. It is a system designed to accelerate."
The CBN also frames regulatory credibility as central to fintech growth, linking enforcement capacity to investor confidence.
Nigeria's exit from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list is presented as evidence of improved supervision, a narrative likely to resonate in Kenya as authorities tighten oversight of digital lenders and payment providers.
Of particular interest to Nairobi's fintech community are Nigeria's plans for bilateral pilots with Kenya, Ghana, Senegal and South Africa to enable mutual recognition of licences.
If implemented, such arrangements could lower expansion costs for Kenyan startups and open up West Africa's vast market without duplicative regulatory hurdles.
With Nigerian startups raising more than US$520 million in equity in 2024, the report argues that stronger regulatory infrastructure could stabilise and grow capital flows across the continent.
For Kenya, where fintech remains a key driver of employment, financial inclusion and exports of digital services, Nigeria's approach underscores a broader lesson: Africa's next phase of fintech growth may depend less on breakthrough apps and more on coordinated, credible regulation that allows innovation to scale beyond borders.
